
Class L U *-0£ / 

Book _^X Jh__. 

Copyright^? _. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



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Mtomibz CDucatfottal jftcnostai^js 

EDITED BY HENRY SUZZALLO 

PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE 

THE EDUCATION OF THE 
NE'ER-DO-WELL 



BY 
WILLIAM H, DOOLEY 

PRINCIPAL, TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOL 
FALL RIVER, MASS. 




HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

BOSTON, NEW YORK AND CHICAGO 

<£fre HSitoer?i&e "$uf$ Cambribge 






COPYRIGHT, I916, BY WILLIAM H. DOOLEY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 

M 22 1316 
©CI.A433470 



CONTENTS 

Editor's Introduction v 

Preface xi 

I. The Neglected Ne'er-Do-Well i 

II. The Qualities of the Ne'er-Do- Well . 8 

III. The Traditional School's Failure to 

Adapt 15 

IV. The Special Needs of this Class . .25 
V. Educational Adaptations Abroad . . .32 

VI. Some American Experiments .... 62 

VII. A Constructive Program 71 

Outline 162 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

So long as the school's standards are academic 
rather than social, it is inevitable that the schools 
themselves should be institutions primarily con- 
cerned with those who have a special genius or 
talent for the formal or abstract intellectual 
disciplines. In the past our educational system 
has undoubtedly favored the scholastic turn of 
mind. It has neglected the training of other types 
of mentality, such as are required in industry, 
art, and business. The usual route to these large 
groups of occupations was, at one time at least, 
the route of failure at school. This was particu- 
larly true of those who were destined to perform 
the minor services in these fields of labor. 

Traditionally, mental power was held to be 
coincident with the narrower limits of academic 
ability, an assumption to which the thoughtful 
pedagogue will not subscribe in these days of 
more careful professional thinking. This fallacy 
was a tragic one for many human beings. Thou- 
sands of school children, who were not vitally 
gripped by school activities and who, in conse- 
quence, were not mentally enlisted to the fullest 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

possible degree, led a life of discouragement at 
school. These concluded that the school's judg- 
ment was more or less complete and final, and 
accepted the school estimate that they " were not 
smart." Parents and public acquiesced in the cur- 
rent psychological mistake. Further education 
for them seemed useless. In consequence they 
made no further demands on the school, dropped 
out, and found employment in whatever part of 
the world's work was open to them. 

From this eliminated group of half -trained 
youth, the " ne'er-do-wells' ' of the world have 
been recruited. It is not to be wondered at that 
discouraged boys and girls, who drift into the 
routine jobs of industry at a very youthful age 
with little general education and no special voca- 
tional training, should fare badly as they grow 
older. The conditions are against them. They 
enter life with a sense of failure, to work at tasks 
that are so simple that there is little stimulation 
to rouse whatever slumbering powers they really 
do possess. Soon the horde of younger "school 
quitters" push them out of their jobs, and they 
find themselves grown older without increased 
ability to assume the more complicated tasks 
appropriate to their age. Their labor tends to be- 
come intermittent, and even where simple, per- 
vi 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

manent tasks remain open to them, the return is 
too inadequate to permit of an independent, self- 
respecting economic life. 

The "ne'er-do-well" has always been a social 
problem, and now, because the school has ac- 
cepted a social point of view, he becomes an edu- 
cational problem. What shall the school do with 
him? 

Doubtless some of the "ne'er-do-wells" are 
born such, but the vast majority can be saved 
if the school system will adapt itself to that por- 
tion of the population which it has previously 
"scrap-heaped." The needed reconstruction of 
the schools will involve a pursuit of four funda- 
mental policies. 

(i) The elementary-school curriculum must 
be made broad enough to include every funda- 
mental mode of utilizing mind which society em- 
ploys in the conduct of its affairs. This will en- 
courage each type of useful success and give to 
every variety of mind that interest and growth 
which are necessary to power and self-confidence 
in doing the day's work. It will lengthen the 
period of schooling and eliminate the tragic sense 
of failure with which so many now enter life. 

(2) The teaching of the elementary school 
must undergo radical pedagogical improvement. 
vii 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

Problems to be studied must be made to arise in 
vital and natural ways so that the child himself 
recognizes the need for all the mental ado which 
the teacher requires. Study and action must 
be so connected that thoughtfulness, memoriza- 
tion, practice, and all the other school activities 
shall have an apparent and worthy consequence. 
Those who are sustained by values which a cul- 
tural environment fixes may well take to study 
on faith, but those who are culturally and eco- 
nomically less fortunate feel only the practical 
pressures of life and need to understand the prac- 
tical relation between study and the life which 
it is designed to solve. For those who cannot 
accept the dictum that truth is valuable for its 
own sake, we must provide a dynamic pedagogy, 
one which constantly establishes a functional 
relation between school activity and social prob- 
lems. 

(3) That philosophy of the elementary school, 
which determines the attitudes of its managerial 
and instructional staff, must be revised so that 
justice shall be rendered to the entire school 
population. This involves less stressing of the 
school's ancient prerogative of selection and re- 
jection, and the fuller recognition of the school's 
new work as a human clearing-house, where tal- 
viii 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

ents are distributed to the particular courses of 
training and lines of occupation where individual 
ability may count for the most in actual achieve- 
ment. Educational and vocational direction 
must become a basic function of the school sys- 
tem however imperfectly it may be performed. 

(4) And, finally, the school system must be- 
come more intimate with life itself. A consider- 
able degree of part-time education must be estab- 
lished. The early stages of schooling and working 
must be correlated through regulated apprentice- 
ship, half-time study and work, the continuation 
school, or other cooperative plans. Under such a 
system of alternation, the youth will see many 
needs for schooling of which he was previously 
unaware. Responsibility provokes thought and 
the need for more information and wisdom. In 
this manner, the period of intellectual growth 
will be greatly prolonged, and the desire for 
knowledge and skill strengthened. 

The methods by which these policies have been 
inaugurated and expanded is the substance of 
this volume. The experiences cited are invalu- 
able to the educator. The solutions proposed are 
constructive attempts looking toward a better 
social and educational economy. No one who 
wishes to give a wide reach to our newer educa- 
ix 



EDITORS INTRODUCTION 

tional efficiency will fail to receive substantial 
aid from an author who has brought personal and 
professional experience to bear thoughtfully on 
an important human problem. 



PREFACE 

During the last ten years, the author has had 
considerable experience dealing with the problem 
of the large number of boys and girls of limited 
ability who have to leave school early, and who, 
under the prevailing system, fall into " blind- 
alley " jobs without the possibility of advancing 
in school or receiving a parallel enlightenment 
which will make life, as a whole, significant. 

The subject is presented first by a complete 
analysis of the problem from the social and eco- 
nomic side, then from the personal or psychologi- 
cal side: followed by a study of experience on the 
subject, ending with very concrete suggestions as 
to how the problem is to be handled with every 
educational phase in mind. 

This monograph is written to offer suggestions 
as to how to meet this educational problem. 
Some of the ideas expressed in this book have 
appeared previously in former articles, written 
by the author, in the Atlantic Monthly, Scientific 
American, and Education. 

W. H. D. 



THE EDUCATION OF THE 
NE'ER-DO-WELL 



THE NEGLECTED NE'ER-DO-WELL 

A problem that is of great economic and vast 
sociological importance is the rapidly growing 
army of the unemployed, the great majority of 
whom are not qualified to fill positions requiring 
skill or special training, and yet lack the educa- 
tion necessary to enable them to undertake any- 
thing but manual labor. A great many social 
workers and educators of this country feel that 
the sources of these conditions lie in our educa- 
tional system. 

In order to determine this fact, in 1905 a com- 
mission was appointed in Massachusetts to in- 
vestigate the needs for education in the different 
grades of skill and responsibility in the various 
industries of the Commonwealth, to investigate 
how far the needs are met by existing conditions, 
and to consider what new forms of educational 
effort may be available. The commission natur- 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

ally first studied the need of industrial education 
in the great manufacturing centers. In the course 
of their investigations of the condition of the 
employment of children between fourteen and 
sixteen years of age, they found that nearly 
five sixths of the children in the mills have not 
graduated from the grammar schools, and a very 
large proportion have not completed the seventh 
grade, while practically none had a high-school 
training. To be more specific, a conservative 
estimate would be that every year in the State of 
Massachusetts from twenty thousand to thirty 
thousand boys and girls, on reaching the age of 
fourteen, leave the schools to go to work. This 
army is four times as large as the group which, 
at approximately the same age, enters the high 
school. Only one of every six of these children 
taking up some wage-earning occupation has 
reached the eighth year or grade of the elementary 
schools, only one of every four has attained the 
seventh year, only one out of every two the 
sixth year. The record of the number of pupils 
that enter the high schools and colleges in Massa- 
chusetts is as good proportionally as any State in 
the Union. So that the above figures would be 
conservative figures for the rest of the country. 
These pupils leave school as soon as the law 
2 



THE NEGLECTED NE'ER-DO-WELL 

allows them and experience no difficulty in ob- 
taining work, at a high initial wage, in what are 
called by our social workers "blind-alley" or 
"dead-end" employments, that is, employment 
such as messenger boys, attendants in bowling 
alleys, attendants in glass factories, doffers, etc., 
in mills. Practically two thirds of the children 
that leave school as soon as the law allows are 
employed in textile-mills. An examination into 
the juvenile work in a mill will show that a boy 
or girl who applies for a position is given some 
one operation at a machine which runs very 
rapidly day in and day out. As the result of per- 
forming this operation day after day, it becomes 
a habit, and is done without mental effort. This 
is particularly true with certain industrial op- 
erations, as "doffing" on the spinning frame, — 
replacing full bobbins with empty ones, — and 
"piecing," — placing broken ends of yarn to- 
gether. This work can be performed to the best 
advantage by young people from fourteen to 
seventeen, and depends upon dexterity of the fin- 
gers. The juvenile worker begins and leaves work 
at the stroke of the bell, when the machinery 
moves and stops, and really becomes a part of 
the machine. This continues till the age of seven- 
teen, when the fingers become too stiff to do the 

3 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

work, and the boy or girl is practically turned 
into the street, having gained no knowledge or 
skill for future use. If a boy during these years 
has a natural curiosity for information about 
the processes that precede or follow his own 
operation, the machine he tends, or the power 
that drives the machine, or the simple ordinary 
calculations used in figuring speeds, drafts, etc., 
he has little opportunity to learn; and if he 
asks about what little he sees, older workers will 
tell him to find out as they did. The whole at- 
mosphere around the mill is such as to stifle the 
propensity of young people to learn. If the boy 
desires to change to another department in order 
to learn the different processes, the overseer will 
refuse him because he is most useful in his pres- 
ent position. Very nearly ninety per cent of these 
children are in industries in which the wages of 
the adult are ten dollars a week or less. In the 
great commercial center of New York City only 
five per cent of children are in positions where 
there is an opportunity to advance or improve. 

In all forms of juvenile work for children be- 
tween fourteen and sixteen the work is intermit- 
tent, — it allows for periods of rest, — and re- 
quires the attention of the child for not more than 
two thirds or one half the time. The operator is 
4 



THE NEGLECTED NE'ER-DO-WELL 

not called upon for consecutive labor demanding 
concentration, attention, and care. Such is the 
universal condition of juvenile labor. In none of 
these occupations are children engaged in run- 
ning machinery. Children at this age have not 
the endurance, the bones are not developed suf- 
ficiently to allow of consecutive work. To illus- 
trate: The average boy or girl of sixteen or 
seventeen will actually give in work at least a 
half -hour a day more than the average child of 
fourteen or younger. The child of the same age, 
sixteen or seventeen, will do at least five per cent 
more work, hour for hour, with a correspondingly 
less amount of waste material and damage to fin- 
ished product. The work will also require less 
supervision, and will be of higher grade when 
finished. 

Another important point is that the pupils who 
leave school between fourteen and sixteen and 
who nominally "go to work" are idle half the 
time and earn during these years not more than 
an average of two dollars a week. Experience 
shows that very few of these young people attend 
evening school voluntarily. At this period of 
life they are tired after a hard day's work, and 
can only be aroused by play and naturally seek 
the companionship of their fellow workers of 

5 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

their own age on the street corner or moving- 
picture house. The course of study of an even- 
ing school is not such as to attract, interest, and 
recreate tired children. Their eyes, wearied with 
long labor in the day, cannot endure much book 
work by night. Physicians confirm this experi- 
ence by stating that they should not be obliged 
to attend evening schools. 

The so-called "skilled" trades, such as the 
higher branches of the metal and machine trades, 
the building and printing trades, typewriting, 
stenography, millinery, dressmaking, and ma- 
chine operating, do not care to receive boys 
and girls until they have at least reached the age 
of sixteen. The above trades of high grade allow 
for individual action, the pupils have an oppor- 
tunity to study their work and make comparisons 
between their past experiences in school and their 
daily work. They also allow for the initiative and 
independence of the pupils and lead to a progres- 
sive development from a simple process to one 
requiring a higher degree of skill and intelli- 
gence. 

The outcome of a boy spending these precious 

years in idleness and doing work which requires 

no thinking, and receiving no systematic training 

outside or inside of the mill, is that he loses the 

6 



THE NEGLECTED NE'ER-DO-WELL 

power of initiative, the habit of thinking, and all 
interest in his work. The same condition applies 
to a girl. When she reaches womanhood she has 
not had an opportunity to be trained in a trade 
and the duties of home-making. By the time 
they reach manhood and womanhood they know 
less than when they left school, and have not 
sufficient education to take the responsibilities 
attached to better positions. We find in our large 
cities thousands of men and women reaching the 
age of maturity without any training for definite 
positions. They crowd the employment offices 
seeking for positions that they cannot fill and are 
often referred to as the "ne'er-do-wells." 



II 



THE QUALITIES OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

Society demands that every living person should 
be a producer within reasonable bounds of age, 
health, and strength; that is, all persons of both 
sexes, while not incapacitated or in school, should 
be doing work. Practically eighty-five per cent 
of the present workers — those who work for pay 

— are engaged in producing wealth (material 
utilities); about five per cent are engaged in 
professional service; the other ten per cent are 
in various forms of personal service. 

The life and health, and to a large extent the 
discipline and character, of eighty-five per cent of 
the working population must be derived directly 
from employment in the industrial and commer- 
cial fields. Any large number of men and women 
of limited ability out of work, as shown by the 
survey in Chapter I, is a heavy burden to society 

— and oftentimes breeds discontent that threat- 
ens the existence of our government. 

What is responsible for this condition? The 
characteristics of childhood and youth are the 
8 



QUALITIES OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

same as they were years ago. The condition is 
due to the great changes in economic and social 
conditions that have been brought about by 
the introduction of the factory system. In old 
times, before the advent of the mill and factory, 
these boys and girls were trained by a well- 
defined apprenticeship on the farm, in the house- 
hold, and in office and trade. Even as early as 
the ages of six, children were assigned tasks at 
home and were expected to do them. 

Juvenile apprenticeship was common on the 
farm, where the boy, in addition to farm work, 
was taught to be " handy. " During the winter he 
learned to make repairs on the barn and house, 
and of farm implements. During the summer he 
was taught how to raise and care for the plants 
and trees and to look after cattle. Incidentally, 
he learned a great deal about the sciences, such 
as the signs of the weather, to know trees, plants, 
and animals, and how to give the "first aid to the 
injured." 

The same was true in regard to the girl, whose 
only occupation was home-making, who was ex- 
pected to serve an apprenticeship in the home. 
In addition to performing the housework, she 
spun, wove, and knitted fabrics worn by the 
family. She assisted the mother in making butter, 

.9 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

cheese, preserves, etc. She received a practical 
course in home-making that prepared her to take 
charge of a home on reaching womanhood. 

The apprenticeship in the trades was carried 
out by a boy becoming indentured, between the 
ages of twelve and fourteen, to a master workman 
for a term of seven years. The master workman 
agreed to teach the boy the complete trade, which 
included the theory and practice; that is, a study 
of raw materials, processes of preparation and 
manufacture, shop accounts and correspondence, 
mathematics and drawing of the trade. In addi- 
tion, the apprentice saw the necessity of contin- 
uous effort and the practice of small economies 
which are the basis of frugality and thrift. He 
learned to fit means to ends and to become in- 
genious and inventive. He learned that when 
many work together every little helps, and that 
only by mutual help can the best results be ob- 
tained. 

The towns and cities were small and moral 
standards were set by men with strong religious 
convictions. Both boys and girls were docile and 
respected their elders and superiors. The result 
was that there were restraining influences over the 
young during their adolescence. The training re- 
ceived under the guidance of the father or master 
10 



QUALITIES OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

taught the boy that there was a task before every 
one that must be accomplished. In doing these 
things he learned by imitation, mechanical skill, 
and related knowledge. He learned to do things 
correctly the first time. In doing this he learned 
the homely old virtues, often called "good 
habits" to-day, such as patience, thoroughness, 
obedience, honesty, and thrift, that go to make 
up successful manhood and womanhood. Both 
the boys and girls had plenty of work to do so as 
to give them the proper physical exercise. 

This was a very satisfactory method so long 
as the master had time to teach the apprentice, 
and so long as the apprentice had time to learn all 
about his trade. Those were the days when life 
was simple and competition was not keen. 
* Since then a great scientific advance has taken 
place — the practical application of science to 
industry — which has revolutionized industrial 
and economic conditions. The factory system, 
which is the modern application of machines and 
capital to manufacture on a large scale, has been 
developed. Men, women, and children are needed 
to tend the machines, and young people, who 
would, under ordinary conditions, have become 
apprentices, are attracted to the mills and fac- 
tories, etc., by the large initial wage. The master 
ii 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

workman has become so busy maintaining him- 
self against the competition of others, and keep- 
ing up with the technical advancement of his 
trade, that time has failed him for the instruction 
of his apprentice, while the latter has found that 
the trade has developed to such an extent that he 
can no longer learn its fundamentals by mere 
activity in his master's workshop. 

Thus, the apprentice, no longer a pupil, has be- 
come merely a hired boy, who, while making him- 
self useful about a workshop, learns what he can 
by observation and practice. If he sees the in- 
terior of his master's home, it is to do some work 
in no way connected with his trade. In old times 
the master worked with his men; now he rarely 
works at his trade; his time is more profitably 
spent in seeking for customers, purchasing mate- 
rial, or managing his finances. The workshop is 
put in charge of a foreman, whose reputation and 
wages depend upon the amount of satisfactory 
work that can be produced at the least cost. He 
has no time to teach boys, and as there is little 
profit in the skilled trades for the boy between 
fourteen and seventeen, he is not wanted. Boys 
of this age are in great demand in factory work — 
cotton and worsted mills, etc. 

The old apprentice system is not likely to be 

12 



QUALITIES OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

revived. The shop is no longer the training- 
school for craftsmanship. The workmen of the 
future must learn how to work by a combination 
of shop and school. The factory system has 
caused our villages to become either large indus- 
trial or commercial centers. Instead of farms or 
cottages with an acre or two of land attached, we 
have thickly settled tenement houses. 

The "ne'er-do- well' ' child of to-day corre- 
sponds in society to the apprentice of old. He is 
endowed with a strong physique and an intensely 
practical mind. The average school does not 
appeal to him after reaching the sixth grade. He 
longs for a training corresponding to the old- 
fashioned apprenticeship when the boy received 
a practical training for life adapted to his needs. 
To-day he lives in a densely populated city with 
practically no opportunities for constructive and 
recreational training. In many cases the home 
does not furnish the proper guidance and instruc- 
tion. To illustrate : all the members of the family 
who are above school ages, including the mother, 
work away from home. They go to work leaving 
the children in bed. About eight in the morning 
the children arise, get their breakfast from what 
is left on the table, and hurry to school with lit- 
tle preparation as to personal cleanliness. They 

13 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

spend the day and evening on the street, with 
the result that the dormant vicious tendencies 
are allowed to develop instead of being stifled by 
proper parental influence. These unfavorable 
social conditions of to-day have practically des- 
troyed a great many homes. . 



Ill 



THE TRADITIONAL SCHOOL'S FAILURE TO 
ADAPT 

The traditional public-school system may be 
compared to a ladder reaching from the primary 
school to the college. It has one direction — 
preparation for college. It is divided into sec- 
tions called "grades," based upon the chrono- 
logic age of the individual. Pupils are graded in 
a school in order, as far as possible, to keep the 
mental and physical development in equilibrium. 
A great many children of the same chronologic 
age may safely be placed in the same grade in 
the school up to the sixth grade, — about the 
age of twelve. But at about this period individual 
children differ from each other in mental and 
physical development to a marked degree, and a 
wholesale classification has proved to be inade- 
quate. This may be explained by studying the 
physical and mental development of children. 

The different types of children in our school 
system may be illustrated by a straight line, one 

15 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

end of which might be called motor-minded and 
the other abstract-minded. The motor-minded 
or hand-minded child is one with a craving for 
achievement, to do, and not to study. He has a 
natural dislike for books, and finds it possible 
to understand abstract principles only by having 
an actual experience with them. The abstract- 
minded or book-minded child is one who has 
no difficulty in committing to memory abstract 
principles and who likes to study books. Between 
these two limits are shades of different types. The 
average child is motor-minded rather than ab- 
stract-minded. 

Roughly we may divide a child's life into three 
periods; infancy, from birth to six; childhood, 
from six to twelve; adolescence, from about 
twelve to manhood. The infancy period is the 
time of life of greatest activity. Mentally the 
child appears to consist mostly of bundles of in- 
stincts. These instincts are the means by which 
the child is able to educate himself. The principal 
ones are locomotion, curiosity, grasping, and imi- 
tation. 

The second period, childhood, is marked by 
less violent or more directed self-activity. Mem- 
ory imagination is formed during this period. The 
greatest instinct is play instinct. It is both ex- 
16 



THE SCHOOL'S FAILURE TO ADAPT 

pression and means of education. During this 
period instincts are changed into habits. 

It is a well-known fact that during the first 
seven or eight years of life the child is interested 
in objects — material things. He is educated 
by objective teaching. Because the memory 
is formed during this period the average school 
teacher makes a great mistake in eliminating the 
objective teaching which is so very prominent 
in the first three grades. He assumes that the 
average child, without having had any previous 
experience or contact with the experience or il- 
lustrations that lie back of them, has large power 
to grasp ideas, principles, abstractions given by 
the teacher or read out of the textbook. 

While a very few children of this age have 
the power of committing to memory information 
without experience, the average boy or girl is 
concrete-minded rather than abstract-minded. 
He comes into possession or grasps new ideas 
and principles only by experience with (actual) 
concrete situations in which he sees them illus- 
trated and applied. The child whose experience 
conforms to an actual commercial experience will 
hold the principles or ideas involved better and 
will be able to apply them as working principles 
in actual situations most effectively. 

17 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

The test for promotion in our school system is 
a literary one. The abstract-minded child, with 
his quick memory, has no difficulty in passing 
the promotional tests, while the motor-minded 
child, without quick memory, fails of promotion 
and becomes what the teachers call a retarded 
pupil. A child repeating a grade feels that he is 
a social outcast among the pupils and loses inter- 
est in school. Then again, a child of twelve who is 
retarded cannot be expected to be interested in 
the methods of teaching and content of informa- 
tion adapted for a child of ten who is not retarded. 

Compare the education of the boy or girl of a 
century ago, or the farmer's son, to that of the city 
boy or girl, who has no acquaintance, during this 
period of life when his habits are formed, except 
with the printed page. Very few of the schools in 
factory towns have manual training in the grades. 
The full-blooded motor-minded children have not 
received the education they have craved. They 
have little opportunity for development of the 
healthy exercises of the country boy or girl. It is 
during this period that these children fail to be 
aroused by mere book learning. 

There can be but little question that our public- 
school system has been very wasteful with the 
material it has been working with. If there is one 
18 






THE SCHOOL'S FAILURE TO ADAPT 

word in the English language which thoroughly 
designates the spirit of the modern age of busi- 
ness it is the word "efficiency." Manufacturers 
are not satisfied with the mere entering of raw 
material into the factory and the finished product 
leaving by another door. They desire to know the 
amount of waste, and are very uneasy if much 
raw material is wasted or placed in the scrap- 
heap. Waste is repugnant to us to-day. Apply the 
same principles of business management to our 
public school and we will see that the school 
system is only now entering upon the stage of 
efficiency which industry has long since adopted. 

At the present time some of the progressive ed- 
ucational leaders are beginning to see that our 
school system is charged with the responsibility 
of preparing young people for life: that the dull 
child can be rescued, and that stupidity has vari- 
ous causes. We should account for every pupil 
that enters the school system. 

It may be said, therefore, that while in the in- 
dustrial centers of the United States we have 
built up at an enormous expense a colossal sys- 
tem of education, offering opportunity for a gen- 
eral education and preparation for admission to 
colleges and higher technical schools, we have 
failed to provide for the great majority of boys 

19 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

and girls who enter industrial life in juvenile 
occupations and who need education more than 
any other class in the community. There thus 
results a gap of at least two years between the 
public grammar-school education and the time 
when the pupil is ready to enter evening school. 
The result is that we allow the results of our edu- 
cational system, so far as these children are con- 
cerned, to be very largely wasted and lost. We 
cease to educate in these all-important years, 
during which we all know that education is most 
needed and most valuable to our working-people. 

Another great educational problem in this 
country to-day is the education of the so-called 
" foreigner" or immigrant. The United States 
seems to be the melting-pot for all the nations of 
the world. During the last ten years over a mil- 
lion of people have entered the United States 
from other lands representing not less than fifty 
races. They represented the poor and the un- 
skilled of the world and as well the untaught and 
the illiterate. No less than a quarter of a million 
of immigrants, fourteen years of age or over, are 
entering the United States annually with no use 
for book, newspaper, pen, or pencil — unable to 
read or write any language. 

The immigration problem is that of making 
20 



THE SCHOOL'S FAILURE TO ADAPT 

efficient Americans out of these people, of making 
competent workmen and good neighbors of the 
unskilled and socially inefficient; for unless we 
succeed in doing this the chaotic mixture may 
upset the melting-pot. 

Some may say that we have been assimilating 
the "foreigners" the last two generations and 
have not failed in the attempt. We should re- 
member that the early immigration was essen- 
tially different from that of the present. Fewer 
immigrants came, and those who did come were 
chiefly from the west and north of Europe. The 
mother tongue of many of them was English, and 
while they had their own "settlement" or "sec- 
tion" of the city, they mingled readily with the 
Americans. To the greater part of the earlier im- 
migrants our form of government, our manners 
of life, our modes of thought were not wholly 
strange. The English, Irish, Scotch, Welsh, Ger- 
mans, French, and Scandinavians have much in 
common with the Americans. On the other hand, 
the immigrants from the east and south of 
Europe, who constitute the bulk of the present- 
day immigration, are very different. They do not 
speak our language, they are ignorant of our form 
of government, their ways of thinking and their 
habits of life are often very different from ours. 
21 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

They settle in distinctly foreign groups, with their 
restaurants, clubs, coffee-houses, etc. This immi- 
gration has assisted the country in its industrial 
growth. Without the influx of " foreigners," we 
should not have had such a tremendous indus- 
trial development. But with this growth have 
come many social and educational problems. 

Reliable statistics show that among the people 
of this country illiteracy is more than four times 
as great as in England and Scotland, where the 
facts are based on records of marriage licenses, and 
sixteen times greater than in Switzerland. The 
records of to-day show that, owing to the very 
large immigration during the last four years, the 
percentage of illiteracy in the United States is 
slowly increasing rather than decreasing. 

The problem is to teach the males of the recent 
immigrants to become useful workers, how to 
speak, read, and write in English, and to lead 
them into intelligent American citizenship. The 
women should be taught English and the house- 
hold arts. 

These foreigners arrive here with large families 
and seek work at the factory gates. They cannot 
speak a word of English. All under sixteen are 
sent to the day school until they can obtain a 
schooling certificate — ability to read and write 
22 



i 



THE SCHOOL'S FAILURE TO ADAPT 

simple English. Those under twenty-one are 
obliged to attend evening schools. The adults are 
not obliged to attend school. 

On account of the scarcity of English-speaking 
help, the manufacturers are obliged to hire them. 
They have come largely from the agricultural dis- 
tricts of Europe and most of them have had ab- 
solutely no experience in factory life or in running 
power machinery. In fact, a great many have 
never seen a power machine till the day they go 
to work in the mill. 

A factory is a highly specialized organization 
to turn out finished products and the machines 
are run at a very high speed. There is little if 
any time to teach foreigners English. The poor, 
non-English-speaking operative begins work by 
being told in English, by the overseer, or second 
hand, or by some other experienced fellow coun- 
tryman, what parts of the machine he is not sup- 
posed to touch. A common method of breaking 
in one of these foreign-born workmen is for a 
friend or relative of the same nationality working 
in the factory to speak to the overseer or fore- 
man for him. The man is allowed to come to 
work in the mill with the understanding that his 
friend may teach him on his own job. When the 
new pupil gets so that he can do anything at all 

23 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

at the operation, he asks for a regular position or 
secures one in some other factory. He is a poor 
workman at the start, but he " knocks around" 
from one job to another, "stealing" sufficient 
knowledge, until he becomes a passable work- 
man. This means that the factories of the present 
day have a great deal harder problem to handle 
than existed twenty years ago. The waste is 
increased and chances for accident have increased 
manyfold. 

The immigrant lives in a colony where his na- 
tive tongue is spoken and sees no need at first 
of learning ordinary English conversation. Since 
he works days, the only institution open to him 
for the instruction of English is the public eve- 
ning school. This school fails to arouse the inter- 
est of the immigrant on account of its traditional 
methods and the kind of information imparted. 



IV 

THE SPECIAL NEEDS OF THIS CLASS 

We have seen that the opportunities, interests, 
and duties of life to-day for the modern boy or 
girl living in an industrial community and for 
those that lived in rural communities of fifty 
years ago are not the same. Since our public- 
school system is the institution assigned by so- 
ciety to prepare our boys and girls for life, it 
must accordingly change, add, or modify the tra- 
ditional course of study to meet these additional 
educational needs. This means that the school 
must supervise the child during the whole educa- 
tional process, — when the child enters school, 
the training provided for him, the age at which he 
goes to work, the character of the work he per- 
forms, and his proper training and guidance while 
he is working, and until he reaches the threshold 
of manhood or womanhood, at eighteen or nine- 
teen years of age. 

The traditional course of study must be 
changed from the first to the last grade so that it 
will educate the whole boy and girl of this day. 

25 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

Special attention should be devoted to the apti- 
tudes of the great mass of children who are motor- 
minded and who must be reached through the 
manual and objective methods of teaching. A 
manual- training class should be attached to every 
school in this country. Children as soon as they 
go to school should be taught to use their hands, 
as the father and mother did in the rural com- 
munities a generation ago. It is very important 
that they should be taught when they are young. 
When a motor-minded pupil arrives at the age 
of adolescence, prevocational classes should be 
established so that his interest in academic work 
will be continued by correlating it with his voca- 
tional interests, < — that is, practical work. The 
aim of all this will be to make every boy and girl, 
when he reaches the age of fourteen, know how 
to use his hands with some degree of skill, to be 
"handy" in addition to the ordinary academic 
work. For the majority this will not necessi- 
tate any more hours of school work. We have 
evidence that, by reducing the time allotted to 
academic work and substituting manual work, 
the mind is stimulated. By so doing, the child 
will not, as soon as the law allows, leave school 
with that feeling of repulsion that is so prevalent 
to-day. 

26 



SPECIAL NEEDS OF THIS CLASS 

Manufacturers find that it is necessary to em- 
ploy juveniles to maintain a scale of wages ad- 
justed to the skill required and the amount of 
work performed in a plant. To illustrate: If a 
manufacturer pays a person one dollar and 
twenty -five cents a day for placing empty spools 
on a spinning frame in place of full ones, who then 
rests a half -hour, it causes dissatisfaction among 
the other help who work continuously for one 
dollar and twenty-five cents a day. This is one of 
the important reasons why juvenile help is em- 
ployed in our factories. We sometimes think that 
child labor is cheap and that that is the reason it 
is employed. Cheapness of labor is not sufficient 
to attain industrial success. Cheap hands must 
be taught, and taught well, or work in the end will 
cost more than that of more experienced hands 
who possess greater skill and have acquired more 
understanding of their work. 

The problem before us in regard to child labor 
is to retain our industrial supremacy, our present 
industrial organization of highly specialized work, 
and to develop the whole boy and girl so that we 
may have successful men and women with in- 
dustrial habits to live useful and happy lives. 
This cannot be done by groups of social workers 
in this country attempting to tear down our in- 
27 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

dustrial system by forcing unjust legislation on 
the community, such as compulsory full-time 
education for children up to sixteen years of age 
or over. In spite of the many assertions from 
social leaders to the contrary, the experience of 
educators in this country and abroad who have 
made a study of education in large factory centers 
leads to the conclusion that it is a positive harm 
to retain the great mass of children between the 
ages of fourteen to sixteen in school on a full-time 
basis. These children have neither the mental 
equipment nor the interest to devote so much 
time to academic work. They have descended 
from ancestors who mature early in life and have 
intensely practical ideas, and therefore should de- 
velop useful industrial habits during the early 
part of adolescence. 

Our social and industrial system is a growth, 
and we are at the present time passing through 
a period of change in it, the like of which has 
never been experienced in any equal space of time 
during the world's history. Any attempt to de- 
grade our factory system, particularly the textile 
industry, which employs practically two thirds 
of the children that have left school as soon as 
the law allows, by saying, "It is ignorance on 
the part of the parents who allow the child to 
28 



SPECIAL NEEDS OF THIS CLASS 

enter the mill or factory, and that neither power 
nor advantage is gained by entering the industry 
at an early age, and the child who does enter asso- 
ciates himself with our most undesirable popula- 
tion,'' is detrimental to the child and to organ- 
ized industry. 

All this means readjustments of our social in- 
stitutions, particularly the educational system. 
The school and factory must work hand in hand. 
The school must supplement the factory in such 
a way as to overcome the deadening effect of 
highly specialized work, and at the same time 
give a training that will develop the child so that 
when he has passed his usefulness in that juvenile 
work he may have the training and intelligence to 
enter other lines of work. 

In order to do this effectively, we must provide 
for working girls and youths opportunities on a 
part-time system, an education which will meet 
with their interests and tastes, assisting each to 
become proficient in some line of skilled work 
that he may enter after passing his usefulness in 
the so-called "blind-alley" positions. 

The educational training on a part-time basis 

for the boy in the so-called skilled occupations, 

where there are sufficient opportunities for him 

to remain all his life, should be for greater effi- 

29 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

ciency and civic betterment. For the boy in the 
so-called unskilled and factory occupations, where 
there is a lack of opportunity for further ad- 
vancement, there should be trade training, so 
that he may receive during the years from four- 
teen to eighteen the beginning of a skilled trade, 
so that he may be accepted, at the end of his 
" dead-end" employment, into one of the skilled 
trades as a useful beginner. 

For the girls in skilled vocations, the training 
must be for greater efficiency, a supplementary 
trade training in case of seasonable employments 
and a training in housekeeping. Since women 
have more or less to do with the home, it is 
doubtful if there is a more effective system of 
education than housekeeping. It will bring both 
health and happiness to the home. On account of 
the unsatisfactory environment of both home and 
neighborhood, the school must assume also the 
burden of looking after the physical as well as 
the mental development of the child. During the 
school session, organized games and physical exer- 
cise should be taught. In this manner it is possible 
to continue the interest of the child in school work, 
to conserve and increase his knowledge to meet 
daily needs. In addition, the school should follow 
up the boys and girls while they are working and 

30 



SPECIAL NEEDS OF THIS CLASS 

give them helpful advice. Vocational advisers 
should assist and direct children in selecting 
vocations and while attending compulsory part- 
time school. Intelligent selection of an occupation 
is the result of intelligent preparation. We cannot 
expect young people to find themselves vocation- 
ally without furnishing them with raw material 
for thoughtful selection. Our public-school sys- 
tem should audit our social and industrial ac- 
counts and publish the opportunities available to 
young people, that they may choose their life- 
work scientifically, and in this way reduce our 
scrap-heap of unskilled labor to a minimum. 
"Blind-alley" jobs will then become ports of 
entry into more skilled and profitable positions. 



EDUCATIONAL ADAPTATIONS ABROAD 

Foreign nations, especially Germany, long ago 
recognized the need of adapting their educational 
system to the needs of all kinds of pupils. The 
average American thinks that the success of Ger- 
many is due to her low wages and long hours of 
work. This is not true, for, if labor is cheaper there, 
coal is dear, machinery dearer, and imported raw 
material pays a tax. The industrial supremacy of 
Germany is the result of definite and deliberate 
action. Forty years ago the German statesmen 
realized that the nation was inferior to the Amer- 
ican and English in natural resources and na- 
tional ingenuity. This inferiority forced upon 
their attention the value of thrift and of educa- 
tion. Thrift was multiplied by capital, and edu- 
cation multiplied by industrial efficiency. 

America and England have served them as 
models of shop organization and equipment. 
They have imported American and English ma- 
chines and tools: they have engaged the best men 
from the best shops of these two countries and 
32 



EDUCATIONAL ADAPTATIONS ABROAD 

have copied their methods of work and organiza- 
tion. Besides this they have devoted special at- 
tention to a matter which the United States has 
ignored to a great extent, the scientific or techni- 
cal education of their people. The German work- 
ing people are, as a class, good, steady, regular, 
and trustworthy. They are not so quick nor so 
inventive as the American, but they do what 
they are told to do, and do it well. 

While we can obtain from the wealth of experi- 
ence of Germany a great deal of practical informa- 
tion on how to conduct continuation schools, we 
must be very careful not to transplant any of the 
schools from Germany and expect them to meet 
our conditions. German industries are organized 
along different lines from our own, and conse- 
quently their educational needs and their work- 
men are quite different from those in America. 
The most important part of the German school 
system is the continuation school. This is not an 
outside movement grafted into the school system 
in anoverzealous endeavor to educate the masses, 
but has a direct connection with the common 
school on the one hand and with industries on the 
other. 

In the city of Munich practically all children 
are obliged to attend the elementary schools until 

33 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

the age of sixteen is reached. Pupils who desire 
to go to college leave the elementary school and 
enter a secondary school, or middle school, at the 
age of ten, and prepare there for a higher institu- 
tion. If a pupil is not going to a higher institu- 
tion, he remains in the elementary school till four- 
teen years of age. The years between fourteen 
and sixteen, and sometimes to eighteen, are spent 
in the continuation schools. For a great many 
years Germany maintained general continua- 
tion schools for children, but it has found that a 
great many pupils are not interested in general 
education, and these schools have been accord- 
ingly transformed into vocational continuation 
schools. 

An examination of the German working day 
will show that there is very little time for eve- 
ning schools. To illustrate: In the engineering 
works of Dusseldorf the hours are as follows: 
Begin work at 6.30 a.m.; breakfast, 8.15 to 8.30; 
dinner, 12 to 1.30 p.m.; tea, 4.15 to 4.30 p.m.; 
close at 6.30 P.M.; total, 12 hours, minus 2 hours 
for meals, equals 10 hours; or 60 hours a week. 

In the Krupp Steel Works at Essen, work is 
begun at 6 a.m.; breakfast is from 8 to 8.15; din- 
ner, 12 to 1.30 p.m.; tea, 4 to 4.15; close at 6 p.m., 
making a total of 12 hours, minus 2 hours for 
34 



EDUCATIONAL ADAPTATIONS ABROAD 

meals. In the cutlery works at Solingen the time 
allowed for breakfast and tea is longer for women 
and youthful workers than for grown men, giving 
two or three hours less of work in the week. 

Note the time required for meals; it is as char- 
acteristic of the Germans as are the indifference 
to meals and hurry of our people. The average 
German workman would be unable to attend 
evening school with the above program. Hence, 
the continuation instruction must be provided 
some time during the hours of the working day. 

Germany's continuation schools are chiefly of 
two types — those fitting for general education 
and those for the requirements of commercial life, 
and the needs of shops, the factories, the local in- 
dustries, and the trades. The commercial schools 
differ from our commercial and business colleges 
of America in that their course in bookkeeping, 
stenography, typewriting, etc., cannot be taken 
alone. There must be added, for nearly or quite 
one half the course, technical instruction and 
business processes, including such subjects as 
production, markets, distribution, consumption 
of the product, price fluctuations, relation of ex- 
ports and imports, etc. 



35 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

Munich Commercial Continuation School 



Subjects 



Compulsory — 

Religion 

Arithmetic 

Theory of exchange 
Bookkeeping and accounting 
Commercial correspondence . 
Commercial geography 
Commodities of commerce . . 

Training for citizenship 

Commercial regulations 

Penmanship 

Electives — 

Stenography 

Typewriting 

Foreign languages 



Hours per week 



Prep, 
class 



Class 


Class 


I 


II 


i 


i 


2 


i 




i 


I 


i 


I 


i 


I 


i 


I 


i 


I 


I 


2 


2 



Class 
III 



2 

(half year) 



i4 



14 



14 



Similarly, the technical processes and practices 
are added to all their industrial courses. The ob- 
ject of all this is to develop industrial intelligence 
rather than create merely mechanical skill. 

In Massachusetts, while more than eighty per 
cent of the boys fifteen years of age have dropped 
36 



EDUCATIONAL ADAPTATIONS ABROAD 

out of school entirely, in Germany the practical 
schooling of boys fourteen to sixteen years of age 
begins and often continues two, three, or more 
years, and their attendance at particular kinds of 
industrial schools suited to the occupations they 
have selected is rigidly required. In Berlin, the 
model city of Germany in matters of education, 
fifty-five per cent of the boys between fourteen 
and eighteen attend such schools. Yet in Amer- 
ica, with all its magnificent system of public 
schools, only one third of one per cent of all the 
boys and young men between fifteen and twenty- 
four years of age are receiving any definite in- 
struction in the sciences and arts which bear 
directly on their occupation. 

Recent investigations show that the average 
German mechanic is the best-trained workman in 
the world, not because he is more intelligent, but 
because an important part of his schooling pre- 
pares him specifically for his trade. An employer 
of labor and student of industrial life in America 
recently declared before the National Educa- 
tional Association that already fifty per cent of 
America's skilled mechanics are educated in 
European countries. 

The Superintendent of Schools of Munich, Dr. 
George Kerschensteiner, expresses very clearly 

37 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

the educational aim and value of the German 
vocational continuation schools when he says : — 

All the ripest and most valuable knowledge that 
we possess comes to us through our calling. Where 
vocational training is conceived in a thoroughgoing 
spirit, it offers endless opportunities for the extension 
of our knowledge and of our powers. A man's strong- 
est emotions are always those connected with the 
attainment of the practical ends of life. If we foster 
such feelings in a pupil, we can win his confidence and 
make him take pride in his work. When once this is 
accomplished, we can make of him, not only an effi- 
cient hand-worker, but a good man and a useful 
citizen. 

We are brought back to the final aim of all public 
education, — the education of the citizen, the educa- 
tion of the individual, not only that he may take his 
place in the calling he has chosen, and that he may be 
able to stand independent by virtue of his work, but 
also that he shall contribute to the well-being of the 
body politic. Only through the success of all can the 
free development of the individual be assured. 

The German Government has solved its edu- 
cational problems in a more satisfactory manner 
than any other country. According to their 
scheme of education, every worker in a profession, 
trade, or commercial pursuit must have not only 
a general education, but technical preparation 
38 



EDUCATIONAL ADAPTATIONS ABROAD 

for the particular work selected by him. In the 
United States, we believe in the same policy, but 
apply it to those entering the professions only, 
disregarding the great mass — ninety-five per 
cent that leave school at fourteen. Germany in- 
sists that very nearly every child be under edu- 
cational influence till at least the age of sixteen 
and often eighteen. The child leaves the common 
school at fourteen. He may go to work, to a higher 
school and prepare for college, or to a technical 
school. In America he may leave school at four- 
teen, and is not obliged to attend any other 
school. The Germans act on the principle, ad- 
mitted by everybody who knows or cares any- 
thing about education, that the way to secure a 
good training for the mind is not to end the 
school life at the most plastic period, fourteen 
years of age, or, in the case of foreigners, as soon 
as they can pass an examination, but to insist 
that every boy shall spend a certain number of 
hours a week under educational training and 
sound teaching till he reaches manhood. There 
is less "cramming," and the instruction is slower, 
more thorough, more reasoned, than it can be 
under our American system of hurrying children 
through the school. 



39 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

The Munich Vocational Continuation School 
for Machinist Apprentices 

One of the best organized continuation schools in 
Germany is the school for machinist apprentices in 
Munich. This school provides a good general educa- 
tion, good technical education for the machinist and 
good education in the rights and duties of citizenship 
while he is learning his trade. Attendance upon this 
school is obligatory for the apprentice throughout 
the whole period of apprenticeship. For helper and 
master- workman courses the school is voluntary. 

The individual subjects of instruction, which are 
in the closest possible connection with the require- 
ments of the machinists' trade, are as follows: Reli- 
gion, trade calculations with bookkeeping, business 
composition and reading, the studies of life and citi- 
zenship, mechanical drawing, physics and mechanics, 
machinery, materials and shopwork. 

The weekly period of instruction is ten hours for 
all classes, of which three hours come on Saturday 
morning, from nine to twelve o'clock, and three 
hours each on two working days, from nine to twelve 
o'clock in the morning, or from four to seven in the 
afternoon. The additional hour is devoted to re- 
ligious instruction by a priest or other authorized 
official. By this arrangement of hours, as well as 
in the assignment of the individual classes to differ- 
ent week days, is rendered possible a suitable change 
in school attendance in the interest of the workshop 
management. 

. 40. 



EDUCATIONAL ADAPTATIONS ABROAD 

On account of the hours of employment no instruc- 
tion is given after 7 p.m. 

The subjects of instruction and hours devoted to 
each subject are given below: — 

Hours of 
instruction 

Religion 1 

Trade calculations and bookkeeping 1 

Business composition and reading 1 

Studies of life and citizenship 1 

Mechanical drawing 3 

Physics and mechanics 1 

Machinery 1 

Materials and shopwork 1 

Total 10 

The instruction in physics and mechanics, as well 
as in materials and shopwork, is undertaken by a 
skilled machinist; the remaining instruction is im- 
parted by the appropriate teachers of the common 
and continuation schools. 

The cost of instruction is defrayed by the city, 
which furnishes the necessary quarters for instruc- 
tion. To make attendance easier, it is arranged that 
when possible classes shall meet in school buildings 
near their homes. 

All metal manufacturers that are in a position to 
do it are pledged to support the school by giving free 
use of machinery, models, etc. 

Apprentices who have not satisfactorily fulfilled 
the required school attendance can, by arrangement 

4i 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

on the part of the master or of the school, be per- 
mitted further to attend the whole or part of the in- 
struction of a class. 

Following is a statement of the rules governing 
this school, together with the course of instruction: — 

Rules and Course of Instruction in the 
Munich School 

Voluntary attendance in a class or a technical les- 
son is permitted to apprentices who are no longer re- 
quired to attend school, and to helpers also. The fee 
fixed by law for such attendance in class is fifty 
pfennig per hour a week per year. 

Those apprentices whose houses or shops lie at a 
great distance from their schoolhouse will receive, 
upon application to the board of directors of the 
street railway, school tickets for the half-year for the 
sum of two marks. 

Division of subjects 

The selection and arrangement of the subjects are 
outlined as follows: — 

Calculations and bookkeeping 

The first object of the instructions and calculations 
is to make accessible to the apprentice the necessary 
knowledge for a sound conduct of business and simple 
economical housekeeping. The second object pertains 
to the trade, and the instruction must gradually carry 
the pupil to the point where he can grasp the geomet- 
42 



EDUCATIONAL ADAPTATIONS ABROAD 

rical and similar construction calculations of machine 
building, and as far as possible carry them out inde- 
pendently. It is necessary to introduce the simplest 
form of equational calculations in order to obtain a 
clear and simple presentation of the mathematical 
laws of physics and mechanics. But the equations 
to be formed in this work are always devised from 
simple practical problems, and before their incor- 
poration in lettered formulae are to be formulated 
clearly and practically in corresponding equational 
wording. Accordingly the instruction in calcula- 
tions is in the following fields: — 

Class I. a. Common calculations — services for 
hours, days, weeks and months. Income book — its 
monthly and annual balancing. The daily, weekly, 
monthly and annual expenses of an individual, of a 
family — household book, monthly and annual clos- 
ing. Economical expenditures and their illustrations. 

b. Geometrical calculations — simple calculations 
of surfaces (four-sided) as applied to flat working 
material (sheet tin, plates, etc.). Computation of 
contents of prism-formed bodies and their weight and 
price calculation. 

c. Equational calculations in connection with the 
previously mentioned geometrical problems; then 
also with the physical problems involved (lever, mo- 
tion, velocity) ; final fixing of the ideas of equality and 
inequality; finding of individual values in an equa- 
tion. 

Class II. a. Business calculations — the buying 
of different metals and other materials of the indus- 

43 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

try. Rebate for cash payment, transportation, and 
other business expenses. Expenditures for working 
materials, workshops and mechanical appliances, life 
and fire insurance. 

b. Geometrical calculations — calculation of tri- 
angles, circles, and cylinders as applied to the form 
and contents of round pieces of work (faucets, casks, 
axles, wheels, etc.). In addition, weights and cost of 
materials. 

c. Equations. Continuation in the making-up of 
equations in the fields of geometrical and physical 
calculations (rotation, friction, heat, expansion). 

Class III. a. Business arithmetic, bookkeeping, 
and exchange. The business books of simple book- 
keeping (inventory, day and cash books and ledger), 
their monthly and annual closing, adjusting and bal- 
ancing them, liquidations, bills of exchange, their 
kinds and use, bill book. In connection with book- 
keeping — simple calculations of cost and estimate 
of expenses for things for the household and work. 

b. Geometrical and equational calculations — con- 
tinuation in the same kind of problems already given, 
but more advanced work. The cone and ball in ma- 
chinery. Calculation of the weight of an object by 
means of the weight of the model. The right-angled 
triangle and the theorem of Pythagoras. The extrac- 
tion of the square root. Further practice in examples 
from physics and mechanics. 

Class IV. a. More comprehensive calculations of 
cost. Reason and aim of the calculations. Fixing of 
the cost of materials, of pay for work, from practical 

. 44 



EDUCATIONAL ADAPTATIONS ABROAD 

examples. Working expenses and their calculation 
based on the materials and wages. Finding of the 
profit in per cent. 

Business composition 

The instruction in composition must make the 
pupil capable of correctly preparing all important 
written communications of a private and business 
nature, as regards their expression, spelling, and 
form. 

Class I. Ordinary letters (to members of the fam- 
ily, relations, and friends, about the life and business 
of the apprentice, also using appropriate matter from 
the other instruction). Business letters — inquiries, 
information, offers of services, application for a po- 
sition, advertisements, statements of loans and re- 
fusals. Apprentice contracts. Business recommen- 
dations. General writings. Communications for 
publication. 

Class II. Compositions regarding buying and 
work. Epistolary and published bids for wares and 
work, price inquiries, ordering of wares, directions 
for work. Purchase agreements. Business direc- 
tions and instructions for delivery. Bills, receipts, 
partial payments, refusals of payment, grievances, 
excuses, judgments, and recommendations. 

Class III. Compositions concerning debts — 
credit reputation, certificates of debt and citizenship, 
dunning letters, granting delays, remission of ac- 
counts, debts of bills of exchange. Written inter- 

45 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

course with officials — petitions to the magistrate, 
building department, manufactory inspectors, police, 
lower court. Reports on the local economic and social 
conditions, to the Department of Trade and Industry, 
to the Government, and to the administration. 

' The instruction in reading in connection with the 
subject of citizenship has for its object the furthering 
of a general and broad development of the pupil and 
the awakening within him of pleasure and taste in 
good literary productions. In so far as the reading 
book treats of the calling of the pupil, this matter is 
used in his technical instruction. The selection of the 
reading matter for the individual classes is left to the 
teacher. 

The studies of life and citizenship 

These branches of instruction are to give to the 
pupils an insight into a sane and spiritual conduct of 
life, and they therefore treat of the problems of hy- 
giene as well as the problems of life in connection with 
the calling, society, and the state, with special con- 
sideration of those fields from which the pupil can 
best obtain a knowledge for the necessary unifica- 
tion of the interests of all conditions of people and 
industrial groups. The subject-matter is divided as 
follows: — 

Class I. a. Hygiene. — The construction of the 
human body. Nutrition. Food and luxuries. Breath- 
ing. Circulation of the blood. Care of the skin and 
teeth. Dwellings and clothing. Work and recreation. 

4 6 



EDUCATIONAL ADAPTATIONS ABROAD 

Gymnastics and exercise out of doors. The influences 
detrimental to health in the industry, especially the 
bad effects of dust. First help in the accidents of the 
industry. Fostering of cleanliness. 

b. Deportment. — Demeanor in the house and 
outside, in the workshop, toward acquaintances, in 
school and in society. 

Class II. Industrialism. — History of hand-work 
in general and of machine construction in particular. 
Beginnings in the construction of so-called machin- 
ery in ancient times (Chersiphron, Mentagenes, etc.). 
Significance of rotary motion for nearly all machines. 
Mechanical contrivances for war and conveyance in 
the Middle Ages. Discontinuation of the machines of 
the older times by the invention of the steam engine. 
(Papin, Newcomen-Watt, Woolf, Stephenson, Ful- 
ton). Recent engine construction (Vorsig, Hart- 
mann, Zimmermann, Krupp, Gruson, Imperial, Ger- 
mania and Vulcan dockyards). The most important 
engine shops of Munich. Allied industries. The pres- 
ent-day condition of engine-building. The most im- 
portant features of the industry. The protection of 
designs (through patents). 

Class III. Citizenship. — Communal government. 
Problems of communal society, its social and eco- 
nomic arrangements. Rights and duties of the com- 
munal citizen. Communal titular officials. The state 
constitution of Bavaria. Problems of state unions. 
Duties and rights of the citizens of the state. Titular 
state officials. The Bavarian state government. 
The constitution of the German Empire. The prob- 

47 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

lems of the Empire. Social legislation. Commerce 
and trade in the nineteenth century and their sig- 
nificance for the well-being of the citizen and indus- 
trialists. The value of German consuls in foreign 
countries. 

Class IV. The citizen of the state in public life. — 
Human society — the social and economic distinc- 
tions in it, their origin, necessity, and present develop- 
ment. General social and political economic systems 
(legislation, administration of rights, security, cul- 
ture, and public safety). The part taken by the citi- 
zen of the state in the advancement of the common 
interests of life. The advantage of life under a united 
states government. Germany's economic and cul- 
tural position in the world. Supplementations of in- 
dustrial legal knowledge, especially legal instruction 
for conducting factories, steam plants, and such me- 
chanical systems. Accident insurance. 

Mechanical drawing 

The object of this instruction is to give the pupil a 
certain amount of training in the use of drawing in- 
struments and in addition the capability of following 
out working drawings without difficulty. The pupil 
must also learn to make a dimensional sketch of any 
part of a machine, from which work can be done or a 
working drawing made. 

Special value is attached to exercising the pupil in 
the correct statement of the necessary measurements. 

Then follows free-hand sketching. 

4 8 



EDUCATIONAL ADAPTATIONS ABROAD 

Distribution over the four years 

The subject-matter is distributed over the four 
years as follows: — 

Class I. Instruction in the use of the ruler, angle, 
and circle. Copying of measurements (fluted metal 
plates, perforated metal plates). Division of dis- 
tances, angles, and circles. Hexagons (receiving nut, 
ratchet wheel). Contact between straight lines and 
circles; and between two circles, the one with the 
other (screw pegs, plates, flanges, stock stands). The 
most important curves. Chain links. Representing 
of materials by colors and by cross-hatching (section 
of rolled iron). 

Class II. The representation usual in the machine 
industry, in ground plan, vertical section and in ne- 
cessary cases in profile. Sketches of simple models 
giving special consideration to the substance. Mak- 
ing of drawings from sketches. (Models for this — 
simple pieces composed of rolled iron, plates, slides 
and guide pieces; rivet bolts.) Representation in 
section. Continuation of the drawing of models 
(covers, packing-box spectacles and cases, anchor 
plates, pieces of tubing, store scales, foundation 
plates, smelting hearth, sliding pieces, axles and 
shafts, bolts and pins). Treated surfaces. '<% f 

Class III. Plane sections, triangle prisms, cyl- 
inders, cones with their development. The most im- 
portant curves and their construction — transition 
curves in rounding out (smoothing irregularities). 
Curves between turned and plane surfaces (cross- 

49 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

pieces, piston-rod heads, rod ends, receiving nuts). 
Penetration of two cylinders with developments. 
Representation of normal screws. Screw joints. 
Rivets and rivet joints. Drawing of more difficult 
models (valves and cock boxes, cross-head, forms of 
lever and piston rods, guiding appliances, regulator 
arms, etc.). 

Class IV. More difficult model drawing according 
to proportions of the given model; for the continued 
development by the brazier. The drawing of separate 
objects and larger working drawings. 

Physics, mechanics, and descriptive machinery 

In this instruction the pupil must be familiar- 
ized with the working of the most important natural 
laws, with continual reference to their practical ap- 
plication. The instruction in descriptive machin- 
ery shows the pupil the important apparatus and 
the chief machines, both as to arrangement and 
method of action with reference to the applied physi- 
cal laws. 

Class I. Motion — uniform straight-lined motion. 
Velocity — motion in a circle. Transformation by 
rim driving and cogwheels. Transformation condi- 
tions for the turning lathe; connecting gear. Screw- 
cutting on the turning lathe. Force; its representa- 
tion by drawings. Composition and resolution of 
forces; parallelogram of forces. Moment of force, 
superimposed pressure. Work, effect. Simple ma- 
chines — lever, wheel and axle, pulley, movement 

SO, 



EDUCATIONAL ADAPTATIONS ABROAD 

along a surface, inclined plane, screw, worm wheel, 
force, mass energy, centrifugal force. Friction. 

Class II. Qualities of rigid bodies. — Molecule and 
atom. Cohesion, elasticity. Principles of tensile 
strength, resistance to compression and shearing 
strength. Qualities of fluids. Horizontal surfaces; 
hydrostatics. Transmission of pressure; hydraulic 
press. Bottom and side pressure. Outflow, buoyancy 
and floating. Qualities of gas. Expansive force and 
tension. Law of Mariotte. Air pump. Expansion air 
balloon. Heat. Expansion of bodies. Melting point. 
Evaporation, vaporization, boiling. Boiling point. 
Saturation and superheated steam. Amount of heat. 
Caloric — specific heat. Heat of melting, heat of 
vaporization, quantities of heat. 

Class III. Grouping of the units of machine con- 
struction and the means of measuring them. Meas- 
ures of length. Vernier, sliding gauge, calipers, meas- 
urements of cavity and depth, vacuum, calibrating 
rods and rings (tolerated exhaust). Determination of 
weight (usual scales, quick scales, platform scales, 
spring scales). Determination of times of revolution 
and velocities (cyclometer, tachometer).; Measure of 
tension (fluid and spring manometer). Determina- 
tion of amount of work (Prong's dynamometer and 
brake experiments). 

Class IV. The steam engine; the actions within 
the cylinder and their representation by drawings. 
Diagram and indicator. The steam distributer. Aim 
and arrangement of condensation. Arrangement of 
the steam engine. The most important features of 

Si 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

the steam boiler. Motors actuated by explosions with 
and without special arrangement for ignition. Regu- 
lation of water power and its employment to ad- 
vantage. 

Materials and work 

It is the function of the instructors to familiarize 
the pupil with materials used in his trade, their source, 
how they are obtained, their qualities and how they 
are worked, and to introduce to him the most impor- 
tant working appliances and methods of work. 

Class III. Iron — source, method of obtaining it, 
its qualities and how it is worked. Blast furnace — 
pig iron, cast iron, and malleable iron. Ingot iron and 
forged iron. Ingot steel and forged steel. Finery pro- 
cess — puddling, Siemens-Martin process, Bessemer 
process. Conversion into steel and tempering. Cast- 
ing, forging, rolling, and drawing with the appliances 
pertaining thereto. The fuel — hard coal, charcoal, 
gas. 

Class IV. Copper, tin, zinc, lead, nickel, aluminum 
as regards their occurrence, obtainance, characteris- 
tics, and working up. The most important alloys as 
regards composition, characteristics, and working up. 
The chief working tools and working tool machinery. 
Grinding, cleaning, corroding, etching. Mention of 
typical objects of manufacture in the line of progres- 
sive development. 

It is in these continuation schools that those who 
are to form the rank and file of the metal trades re- 
ceive their training. 

52 



EDUCATIONAL ADAPTATIONS ABROAD 

Training Girls to be Good Housekeepers 
in Belgium 

Belgium has the honor of establishing the first 
school in household arts for girls and women. As a 
result, Belgium could probably boast, prior to the 
war if not to-day, of offering the best facilities that 
the world knows for the training of young women 
for the duties of the house. While the institutions 
that provide this sort of training were established by 
private associations, they were soon brought under 
government inspection, so that in every large center 
in Belgium one could find an excellent school under 
government supervision, housed in a splendid build- 
ing, offering both day and evening courses to meet 
the varied needs of women. 

The development of these schools began about 
thirty years ago as a result of the tremendous evo- 
lution of industry and the rapidly increasing number 
of girls participating in hand and factory labor. It 
was found that the young woman entered the work- 
shop or factory immediately upon completion of her 
compulsory education in the common schools. She 
had, therefore, no opportunity of adapting herself to 
household duties, nor of acquiring the domestic vir- 
tues which would be necessary to her when, in her 
turn, she should marry and have a new home. Not 
only was the opportunity wanting, but there was no 
inclination. 

Training girls in household subjects in Belgium be- 
gins at six years of age. It is restricted to needlework. 

53 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

The reason that housewifery instruction is not given 
is because the children in the primary grades are too 
young to do practical work; what they can do is little 
more than play. Then again, young children do not 
know the value of money, and when you speak to 
them of the cost of a certain article they do not under- 
stand or know the value of the same. 

Needlework instruction in primary schools aims 
chiefly at practical results, and by practical is meant 
everything which is applicable in the homes of work- 
ingmen, laborers, and small tradesmen. Thus, for 
instance, great attention is paid to the making and 
mending of ordinary garments, and fancy work is 
taught when useful kinds of sewing have been mas- 
tered, and then it consists principally of trimming for 
linen and clothes. While the pupils are taught only 
work adapted to their practical needs, to the condi- 
tions in which, presumably, they will have to live, 
an attempt is made to form their taste, and to show 
them that simplicity favors, rather than excludes, 
elegance; no luxury in the way of bought ornaments, 
even of small cost, is allowed. 

Needlework is taught to the whole class simultane- 
ously, with individual correction. The teacher herself 
generally institutes her own methods of instruction; 
as a rule, the first step consists in inductive explana- 
tions and demonstrations before the pupils. The 
teacher does everything on a large scale so that all the 
children may see. The knitting stitch in the lower 
standard, for instance, will be shown with large 
wooden needles, and with thick wool of two colors, 

54 



EDUCATIONAL ADAPTATIONS ABROAD 

used alternately for each row of stitches, so that each 
stitch is distinguishable. This is followed by an exam- 
ination of knitted articles — stockings, for example. 
In a similar way, in sewing the different stitches will 
be first demonstrated on canvas upon a frame, with a 
big needle, and thick colored thread. The learning of 
each stitch is followed by practical applications, at 
first simple and then more advanced; the latter com- 
bine two or more different stitches. When pieces of 
work are too difficult for the pupils of the lower stand- 
ard to finish, they are handed over to the pupils of 
the middle or the upper standard, in order to teach 
the girls to help each other. Cuffs, for instance, are 
sometimes finished with crochet-work by the pupils 
of the middle class, and children's petticoats knitted 
in strips in the middle standard are joined and put 
into a waist-band by the pupils of the upper classes. 

In the upper classes, where cutting is taken up, 
measurements are taken by one pupil from another 
before the whole class. The pattern is drawn and cut 
out in paper and afterward in the material, having 
been first studied in the made-up article. Then comes 
the necessary tacking together, fitting, correcting, 
and making up. The lessons in cutting out are accom- 
panied by talks on raw materials, the choice of ma- 
terials from the point of view of price, usefulness, 
taste, and their hygienic properties. The teachers 
also make technological collections (cotton industry, 
wool industry) and collections of patterns. 

All the work done by the pupils is in real sizes and 
not on a reduced scale. As far as possible, articles are 

55 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

chosen which can be used by the girls themselves. It 
is hoped that this will help the pupils to realize the 
usefulness of needlework, and that the pleasure they 
take in it will develop their taste for manual occupa- 
tions. 

The necessary materials — thread, wool, knitting 
and sewing needles, and material — are supplied 
gratis by the commercial council (in the case of pri- 
vate schools, by the friends of the schools) to pupils 
who receive free instruction, at the rate of one to one 
and a half francs per pupil. In some places the pupils 
are given all the articles which they make themselves; 
in others, the articles, at the end of the year or at the 
beginning of winter, are distributed to the neediest 
children in the school. 

At every favorable opportunity the subjects of 
other lessons are chosen so as to recall or enforce the 
principles taught in the needlework lessons. In arith- 
metic, for instance, in the lower standard the pupils 
calculate the cost of the work that has been done (the 
wool used for the cuffs, etc.); in the middle classes 
they are taught beforehand the cost of the materials 
necessary for work; in the upper classes they have 
similar but more difficult exercises. Subjects bearing 
on needlework will be chosen for reading, writing, 
dictation lessons: for instance, the usefulness and the 
pleasure of needlework, a resume of what has been 
learned, good taste, and simplicity in dress. 

Drawing, in girls' schools, is taught with especial 
reference to needlework, principally in the middle 
and upper classes; patterns for various garments, 

56 



EDUCATIONAL ADAPTATIONS ABROAD 

collars, aprons, chemises, bodices, etc.; representa- 
tions of the various kinds of drawing and patching; 
and lessons on the choice of colors for embroidery, 
dress materials, etc. 

The following is the model course laid down for 
needlework: — 

Lower classes 

i. Knitting a band or garter (two needles); study of 
the stitches; stitches on the right side; stitches on 
the wrong side; edges; increasing and decreasing; 
how to cast on stitches. 

2. Knitting (four needles) ; cuffs. 

3. Socks; study of relative proportions; casting on and 
knitting. 

Middle classes (recapitulation of the preceding course) 

1. Knitting stockings; study of the relative propor- 
tions; drawing a stocking, and its different parts in 
their relative proportions; casting on and knitting; 
how to measure the stocking in course of making; 
how to strengthen the heel. 

2. Study of cross-stitch on canvas; letters and numbers. 

3. Elements of sewing — running, hemming, back- 
stitching, overcasting, seam, hem, French double 
seam, oversewing, selvedge, oversewing folded edge. 

4. Making simple and easy articles — towels, napkins, 
handkerchiefs, aprons, women's chemises and patch- 
ing. 

Upper classes (recapitulation of the preceding courses) 

1. Knitting a vest; mittens. 

2. Marking linen; letters and numbers. 

57 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

3. Stitching; gathers; buttonholes; and eyelet holes. 

4. Mending garments; simple darning, and darning ac- 
cording to the web of stockings; patching linen and 
garments; fine darning on linen and table linen. • 

5. Cutting out and making easy garments, especially 
chemises and bodices. 

Fancy work, crochet, embroidery, tapestry work, 
etc., should only be taught to the pupils who have 
mastered useful sewing. 

The syllabus is arranged in six school years. Three 
hours a week are devoted to needlework during the 
first five school years, and three and one half hours 
during the sixth school year. The first and simplest 
sewing stitches are taught from the first year onward; 
every year revision is made of the stitches already 
learned. 

Raw materials are furnished at the rate of thirty- 
eight cents per pupil. All of the apparatus necessary 
for instruction — such as models, charts, frames, 
large wooden needles, thick wool — are furnished by 
the consumers and are occasionally supplemented by 
the teacher. The needlework lessons are given to all 
the class, together with individual help and correc- 
tion. The instruction is given methodically, so as to 
be as inductive as possible, and to appeal to the pu- 
pils' intelligence. 

The people of Belgium are far ahead of Americans 
in their observance of the "penny saved and penny 
earned theory." They use for their salads the parts 
of the vegetables which we throw away. They toast 

58 



EDUCATIONAL ADAPTATIONS ABROAD 

the "left-over" slices of bread which we let mould. 
They prepare, from the common and healthful vege- 
tables which we scorn, dishes fit for epicures. And 
they do these things because they have been trained, 
from early childhood in housekeeping schools, to be- 
lieve that thrift is imperative. As a result, they have 
good health, happiness, bank accounts, and financial 
ability which is rare among the plain people of 
America. 

England faced this great educational problem 
of part-time instruction years ago. A half-time 
system was introduced, in 1833, by the Commis- 
sion on the Employment of Young Persons in 
Factories, to prevent overwork and under-edu- 
cation. j The success of this scheme is shown by 
the report of the late Commission on Technical 
Education, which states: — 

Half-time children of the great manufacturing 
[factory] town of Keighley, England, numbering 
from fifteen hundred to two thousand, although they 
receive less than fourteen hours of instruction per 
week and are required to attend the factory for 
twenty-eight hours in addition, obtain at the exami- 
nations a higher percentage of passes than the aver- 
age of children throughout the whole country receiv- 
ing double the amount of schooling. 

Recent reports from the English district fac- 
tory inspectors show, in one factory district in 

59 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

England, where thirty-five children attended 
school two and one half hours daily and worked 
in the mill five hours, with a complete rest every 
alternate week after 3 p.m., and from Friday until 
9 a.m. the following Monday, that the half-time 
children were bright, healthy, and presenting an 
intelligent appearance. 

The inspector of schools found that the "half- 
timers" made as much progress in their educa- 
tion as did the full-time scholars, and invariably 
earned the full government grant which depends 
both on attendance and scholarship. They are 
necessarily very regular in their school attend- 
ance, because lost attendance has to be made up 
before they can renew work in the mill. The fact 
that they earned $1.10 a week probably accounted 
for their being better fed and clothed than our 
children of the same class. 

Mill managers of the high-grade textile indus- 
try, worsted trade, in England state that, after 
all allowances have been made, a boy or girl 
trained as a half-timer is as bright as the normal 
full-timer. Of course, mill managers naturally pre- 
fer full-timers, as they are more easily controlled 
and organized. The part-time schooling in Eng- 
land is not very efficient, because it is of a general 
continuation-school type and fails to appeal to a 
60 



EDUCATIONAL ADAPTATIONS ABROAD 

great many pupils, nevertheless, it is better than 
full-time schooling or full-time work for many 
pupils. 

Similar experiences in different parts of Eng- 
land and on the Continent show that the long- 
time system (all-day schooling) and the omission 
of industrial work are in violation of the laws of 
physiology. 

In Edinburgh, Scotland, there is a vital con- 
nection between the school and employment de- 
partments. In the same building with adjacent 
offices are the directors of the continuation schools 
and the employment bureau. They find positions 
for young people between the ages of fourteen 
and sixteen who are going to work. The director 
of the continuation schools has information as 
regards the mental and physical development of 
every child and the kind of work they desire, and 
the employment agency, on the other hand, has a 
list of positions and opportunities open to young 
people. The two departments work together in 
the interest of the child and the employer. 



VI 

SOME AMERICAN EXPERIMENTS 

During the last few years a large number of in- 
vestigations or surveys have been made in the 
large cities of this country to obtain data upon 
which to make intelligent experiments along edu- 
cational lines, particularly vocational education. 
The value of these surveys is found in the sugges- 
tions which they offer to other cities and towns 
interested in providing practical education for 
their people. Since it is necessary to experiment 
in education as in other lines in order to make 
progress, we should be careful to experiment in- 
telligently and profit by the experiments of other 
communities. 

The last survey, during the year 191 5, has 
been carried on in the city of Minneapolis under 
the direction of Mr. Charles A. Prosser and the 
National Society for the Promotion of Industrial 
Education, for the purpose of determining just 
what kinds of industrial training are required 
to meet the needs of Minneapolis. 

Three recent causes led directly to the survey: 
62 



SOME AMERICAN EXPERIMENTS 

(i) The enforcement of the compulsory education 
law; (2) the enactment of a minimum wage law 
for women; (3) the establishment of the Dun- 
woody Institute by the bequest of five million 
dollars for industrial education, by the late Wil- 
liam Hood Dunwoody, a wealthy Minneapolis 
flour manufacturer. The Dunwoody Institute 
was founded to give free instruction in the in- 
dustrial and mechanical arts to the youth of 
Minneapolis and Minnesota. 

Before undertaking to put into effect in a com- 
prehensive way the provisions of the will and the 
city's plans for industrial education, it was de- 
cided to obtain complete information on the 
subject; so that Minneapolis has excellent facili- 
ties for becoming the laboratory of the country 
on vocational education. 

The main questions dealt with in the survey 
are: — 

1. To what extent is there a need for vocational 
training in Minneapolis? 

2. To what extent are the public schools, private 
agencies and apprenticeship systems meeting 
the need? 

3. What kinds of vocational education are needed? 

4. How can cooperation be arranged between the 
schools and the trades and industries? 

63 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

A thorough study was made of all the industries 
in the community to determine the following 
questions: — 

i. Whether there is a content of technical knowl- 
edge or skill in any job that cannot be acquired 
through routine work for which special instruc- 
tion is needed. 

2. If so, what is it? 

3. Whether it can best be imparted by provisions 
inside the industry. 

4. If not, whether it is worth while to provide for 
such instruction through outside agencies. 

5. If this is true, whether such instruction shall 
take the form of 

a. All-day industrial schools. 

b. Trade schools. 

c. Part-time industrial classes. 

d. Evening classes. 

6. Whether there are any jobs for which it is not 
desirable either to direct the youth or to train 
him at public expense. 

7. What number of new workers could be prepared 
for any job, if it has a teachable content, without 
overstocking the market? 

8. What kind of equipment as to age and physical 
and mental assets the worker should have for 
the job? 

9. To what extent does the industry select its 
workers for any job so as to secure those best 
adapted to it? 

64 



SOME AMERICAN EXPERIMENTS 

The answers to the above questions show 
Minneapolis the types and extent of the schools 
needed, the courses of study to be followed 
in their schools, and the equipment and try- 
out necessary to carry out the aims and pur- 
poses. 

It is coming to be recognized that in some in- 
dustries the training of the worker should be as 
much a matter of trade agreements as hours of 
labor, scales of wages, grievance boards, and 
other matters which ultimately and vitally con- 
cern both the employer and the employee. These 
are dealt with by means of a joint agreement 
known as the "Protocol." The survey in Minne- 
apolis has worked out in a complete form, in con- 
nection with courses given at the Dunwoody 
Industrial Institute, trade agreements covering 
the following: — 

i. The conditions under which the new workers 
are to be trained and received into the trade or 
occupation. 

2. The credit toward the period of apprenticeship 
to be given any course of training in the school 
either before or after employment. 

3. The training in schools as well as shop to be re- 
quired of the apprentices after employment. 

4. The preference given to local and trained 

65 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

workers in hiring and promoting in the trade 
and occupations. 
5. Possibilities and arrangements for instruction 
during the dull-season periods of trades. 

As a result of this survey all-day, part-time, 
dull-season, and evening classes have been formed. 
Since Minneapolis has committed itself to com- 
pulsory full-time education for all children less 
than sixteen years of age who have not graduated 
from the grammar school, it precludes also the 
use of compulsory continuation schools for em- 
ployed children less than sixteen years. Effective 
prevocational classes and manual training with 
vocational direction have been introduced in the 
grades to hold the interest of the motor-minded 
children from twelve to sixteen years of age. 

Other communities have conducted interest- 
ing experiments along educational lines for the 
neglected boy and girl, who cannot profit by 
the existing traditional public-school instruction. 
No one community is meeting all the educational 
needs of this group. 

Chicago has introduced hand-work in all the 
elementary grades from the kindergarten to the 
high school. The children are made familiar with 
ordinary industrial processes of a limited range 
and with the materials that enter into the work, 
66 



SOME AMERICAN EXPERIMENTS 

In addition to full-time evening and prevocational 
classes arrangements have been made with the 
unions and employers to have continuation 
classes for apprentices: — 

Agreement between Carpenters' District Coun- 
cil and Carpenter Contractors' Association: This 
involves about two hundred and forty apprentices 
at the present time. The apprentices attend 
school during January, February, and March and 
are paid their regular apprentice wages. 

Agreement between the International Brother- 
hood of Electrical Workers, Local 134, and the 
Electrical Contractors' Association: This in- 
volves at the present time only about eighty 
apprentices, but in normal times one hundred and 
forty to one hundred and fifty. The apprentices 
attend school one morning each week without 
loss of pay. 

Agreement between the Journeymen Plumb- 
ers' Association and the Master Plumbers: This 
involves about one hundred and forty appren- 
tices at the present time. The apprentices attend 
school one morning each week without loss of 
pay. 

About thirty machinists are attending the 
Crane School one morning each week, but this is 
not by agreement between the union and em- 

67 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

ployers. In these cases the employers grant the 
apprentices a half-day's time to attend school 
without loss of pay. 

By arrangement of the Chicago Retail Drug- 
gists' Association many apprentices in pharmacy 
are permitted to attend school for part of each 
day to earn their credits for admission to schools 
of pharmacy. This arrangement went into effect 
February i, 191 5. 

The New York City School System is conduct- 
ing some very interesting experiments in prevo- 
cational training in the elementary schools under 
Associate Superintendent William L. Ettinger 
and in part-time education under Associate Sup- 
erintendent John H. Haaren. 

The plan of the prevocational training is as fol- 
lows: Pupils in the seventh- and eighth-grade 
classes are allowed to select a prevocational 
course which includes two groups of studies — 
the academic and the shopwork. The first in- 
cludes the essentials of English, arithmetic, 
science, history, and geography. The second in- 
cludes the theory and practice of mechanical 
drawing, freehand drawing, electric wiring, gar- 
ment design, joinery, sheet-metal work, machine- 
shop practice, printing, plumbing, and sign- 
painting. 

68 



SOME AMERICAN EXPERIMENTS 

The time allotment during the week is as fol- 
lows : — 

Total time 35 hours 

Shop time 15 hours 

Academic time 20 hours 

English 5 hours 

Arithmetic 3 hours 

History, geography 2 hours 

Science 2 hours 

Physical training, hygiene 5 hours 

Related drawing 3 hours 

The academic material is correlated with the 
shop subjects and shop instruction. In order to 
do this effectively the academic instructors spend 
one hour daily in the shops consulting the teacher 
and pupils so that he is able to talk intelligently 
in the class work about the shop instruction. 
Pupils receive samples of different kinds of indus- 
trial work during the two years. The afternoons 
during the first nine weeks are devoted to ma- 
chine work. Pupils showing unusually marked 
ability in the trade may continue in this branch, 
while those who show that they are not proficient, 
change to electric wiring the second term of nine 
weeks. This scheme is continued every nine 
weeks in woodworking, sheet-metal work, com- 
mercial subjects, etc., until the pupil has found 
the trade that he is best adapted to follow. 

69 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

Superintendent Randall, of Cincinnati, is 
conducting some interesting experiments in 
vocational guidance. Definite instruction in voca- 
tional guidance is given in the grades. Coopera- 
tion between the manual-training and academic 
teachers has done a great deal to accomplish this 
purpose. 

The City of Boston, under the direction of 
E. Stanwood Field and Deputy Commissioner 
Robert 0. Small, of the Massachusetts State 
Board of Education, has organized compulsory 
continuation schools for minors between the ages 
of fourteen and sixteen years. These continua- 
tion schools are divided into three groups — gen- 
eral improvement, prevocational, and vocational 
continuation schools. 



VII 

A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

Every community should provide an effective 
system of day continuation schools for pupils, be- 
tween the ages of fourteen and sixteen, who are 
either obliged to leave school for economic reasons 
or who leave because they are not interested in 
existing school work. Experience shows that few 
pupils are willing to attend voluntary continua- 
tion classes; therefore it is necessary to make 
attendance at these schools compulsory. These 
classes should be from not less then four hours a 
week to a half-time basis. 

The organization of compulsory continuation 
schools should meet the educational needs of all 
young people. Therefore it is necessary to have 
three types of schools: — 

i. General continuation classes for pupils who 
have left school for economic reasons and who 
desire to continue their general education. These 
are often spoken of as "general improvement" 
classes. The methods of instruction and content 
of information closely resemble those of the regu- 
lar school. Since most pupils reach the sixth 

7i 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

grade by the time they are fourteen years of age, 
most of the instruction should begin at that grade. 
A distinct class should be formed for those who 
are ambitious to attend some higher institution 
of learning. The only exception is in case of the 
foreign-born child who entered the regular schools 
over age and left as soon as he met the require- 
ments of the law — ability to read and write 
simple English. Special ungraded classes may be 
formed for this group. 

2 . Prevocational continuation classes for pupils 
who have left the grades and who are working in 
"blind-alley" positions; also for pupils who do 
not know the character of work they are best 
fitted to pursue, and who therefore require 
samples of different forms of commercial and in- 
dustrial work so that they will have an oppor- 
tunity to measure their abilities and aptitudes 
against the practical demands of the different call- 
ings. The prevocational opportunities may be 
divided into two groups — those fitting for the 
requirements of commercial life, and those di- 
rectly planned to meet the needs of shops, fac- 
tories, and local trades. 

3. Vocational continuation classes are for pu- 
pils who know definitely the kind of vocational 
work they desire, or are in a skilled trade, or are 

72 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

in an occupation that does not furnish prepara- 
tion for skilled employment. Since the skilled 
trades do not, as a rule, care to employ juveniles 
under sixteen, the number attending these classes 
from skilled trades will be small. 

The impracticability of teaching a large num- 
ber of trades in a continuation school, such as 
would be necessary to meet the educational needs 
of all pupils between fourteen and sixteen, is evi- 
dent to all. The average vocational continuation 
school teaches five or six trades, such as the trades 
of machinists, electricians, woodworkers, and the 
building trades. As a matter of fact, there are 
over two hundred and seventy industries in the 
State of Massachusetts, which is a typical indus- 
trial community. The average vocational con- 
tinuation school, if developed in every urban 
community, would in a short time flood the 
market with student mechanics of a few trades. 
This would be detrimental to all concerned — ■ 
community, citizens, and manufacturers. 

Then again, experience shows that in a voca- 
tional school where work is not carried on under 
conditions of a real factory, it is almost impossi- 
ble for a pupil to attain a practical skill and effi- 
ciency equal to that of a good workman in the 
factory. The economical methods of production, 
73 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

particularly the workman's time as a factor in the 
cost of production, can never be sufficiently dem- 
onstrated to a pupil in a mere school where his 
wages do not depend upon his actual productive 
ability. Then again, the skill required for a com- 
mercial product cannot be understood by a boy 
until his product is put to actual commercial 
use and until he sees an incentive in the form 
of wages for his judgment and skill in producing 
it. Wherever it is possible, the factory or shop 
and continuation school should cooperate, so 
that the shop practice shall be given in the 
shop or factory and the related technical and 
academic subjects shall be given in the school. 
This may be done by having the manufacturers 
set aside a certain portion of a factory plant for 
the training of apprentices on commercial work. 
One of the great difficulties in making arrange- 
ments on less than half-time — one week at 
school, and the other at work — is the difficulty 
in arranging shifts. In large factories, such as 
cotton mills, it is possible to increase the force of 
juvenile workers one thirteenth, and then allow 
one thirteenth of the group out one morning or 
afternoon during the week. This would allow for 
four hours' instruction a week. Two half days 
would allow for eight hours a week. In this 
74 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

manner it is possible to have the full quota of 
workers in the mill all the time. 

A factory school, in order to be efficient, must 
be well equipped and the equipment kept up to 
date. A commercial product must be used. This 
means a large expenditure of money and a large 
cost for maintenance and raw materials. While 
the school may receive some revenue from the 
sale of products, nevertheless, the school cannot 
buy raw materials or sell its products at an ad- 
vantage. Then again, a shop has a peculiar shop 
spirit among its workers that can be obtained 
only by actual experience in the shop. 

It is clear that the most effective and efficient 
method of training young people for trade work 
is by combining in some way actual shop experi- 
ence with theoretical knowledge in the school. In 
this way one obtains the actual skill by participat- 
ing in a commercial shop on a commercial article 
under commercial conditions. Then the theory 
or related knowledge may be obtained in a school. 
In order to have a school that will be in the inter- 
est of the boy as well as of the manufacturers it 
is necessary that the public-school authorities — 
school committee or some committee represent- 
ing the public — and the manufacturers enter into 
a partnership. 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

The practice shops in the factories should not 
be exclusively in the control of the manufactur- 
ers, nor should the theoretical instruction in the 
schools be exclusively in the control of the school 
committees. Both shop and school should be con- 
trolled by a committee composed of representa- 
tives of the various interests involved. It has 
been suggested, as in the city of Beverly, that five 
members of the school committee, the mayor, and 
one representative of the manufacturer furnishing 
the practice shop should constitute the Committee 
on Industrial Education, and that the superin- 
tendent of schools should be, ex officio, secretary 
and executive officer. The Committee on Indus- 
trial Education would then have full charge of 
the school and shop and of all matters pertaining 
to the same. The manufacturer furnishing the 
practice shop would reserve the right to with- 
draw his cooperation upon suitable notice in case 
he is dissatisfied with the management of the 
shop. 

The terms on which a manufacturer would co- 
operate in furnishing a practice shop would be an 
agreement that the manufacturer would furnish 
the necessary floor space, power, heat, and light, 
and the machinery and tools necessary for the 
equipment. This shop would be operated, so far 

76 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

as accounting is concerned, as a separate factory. 
The manufacturer would furnish the raw mate- 
rials and drawings for the work to be performed 
and would purchase at established prices all fin- 
ished products that passed inspection and were 
accepted. One half the piece-price for the product 
would be paid to the pupil performing the labor 
and the other half would be devoted to mainte- 
nance. In the accounts, the practice shop would 
be debited for the cost of maintenance, including 
raw materials and instruction, and would be 
credited with the full value of all productions, and 
if, in any case, the accounts showed any profit, 
such profits would be devoted to the support of 
the school. It is hardly to be supposed, however, 
that the earnings of the shop would ever even 
approximate the cost of maintenance. The manu- 
facturer could in no case receive any profits from 
the labor of the pupils in the school and the pupils 
would in no way compete with regular employ- 
ees in the factory. 

Vocational education for girls and women is as 
important as vocational education for boys and 
men. Statistics show that eighty per cent of girls 
will eventually marry and become housekeepers. 
The others will have more or less to do with the 
home. The problem is to give them a vocational 

77 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

training so that they can find a position as soon 
as they leave school, and at the same time to pre- 
pare them for the home. 

Experience shows that vocational education 
for girls and women is very different from that of 
men and boys. The incentive that makes a boy 
or young man strive for vocational education is 
the very thing that causes girls not to be im- 
pressed with the need of greater efficiency in trade 
work. The young man enters upon industry for 
his life-work, and he wants a training that will 
advance him and give him a permanent occupa- 
tion. A great many girls, on the other hand, ex- 
pect to marry, and are going into industry for a 
short time until they are married. They know 
that the opportunities for advancement are very 
limited, and therefore desire a simple form of in- 
struction and training to obtain skilled positions 
and at the same time be prepared to be home- 
makers. 

Since the aim of a continuation school is differ- 
ent from the regular public schools, it should be 
conducted in a separate building under an inde- 
pendent administrative officer and faculty. The 
methods of teaching, content of information, 
standards of discipline, and scholarship should 
be somewhat different from those of the regular 

7 s 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

school. The school should be in session between 
the hours of eight and five, five days a week 
throughout the year. 

The time allotments for general continuation, 
or prevocational continuation, and for vocational 
continuation schools have been worked out by 
the State of Massachusetts as follows: — 

General Continuation School 

Total time 
(per cent) 

Specific training — English, arithmetic, geog- 
raphy, and history 50 

Discovering and cultivating native interests 
and powers 25 

Testing capacity in some manual work, voca- 
tional information, civics, hygiene, recreation 
and cultural studies 25 

Prevocational Continuation School 

Shop work — samples of industrial or household 

arts 50 

Information relating to the industry obtained 

from books, excursions 25 

Civics, hygiene, recreation and cultural courses . . 25 

Vocational Continuation School 

Trade work — related trade work on the proc- 
esses of production, distribution, and consump- 
tion 2$ 

Civics, hygiene, recreation and cultural courses . . 25 

79 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

Classes of instructors 

It is necessary, in order to conduct all -day 
prevocational or continuation classes efficiently, 
to have four classes of instructors: — 

The principal, or supervisor, who is the admin- 
istrative officer of the school. 

The trade teacher, who should have at least 
an education equivalent to that of the grammar 
school and five years' successful experience as a 
tradesman. 

Technical teachers or teachers of related 
subjects, such as vocational science, vocational 
mathematics, drawing, etc., who should have an 
education of at least two years above that of the 
high school in technical branches. In addition he 
should have an appreciative knowledge of trade 
conditions and a sympathetic attitude toward 
children of limited ability. 

An academic teacher, who should have a 
general education of at least two years above 
that of the high school. In addition he should 
have an appreciative knowledge of industrial 
conditions and a genuine interest in mechanical 
subjects and apprentices. 



80 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

English 

Every pupil in a continuation school should re- 
ceive instruction in written and oral English. In 
the liberal continuation school literature for ap- 
preciation should be offered. In addition, class 
exercises should include debating, argument, 
writing reports and compositions. Spelling, punc- 
tuation, and the use of the dictionary should be 
taught in connection with the regular work. 

Other subjects, such as history, geography, 
and drawing, may be taught in an unorganized 
manner — as the occasion rises — as well as in 
organized courses. 

Hygiene should be taught in an intensely 
practical way, such as information with reference 
to occupational diseases, safety appliances, first 
aid to the injured, and personal hygiene. 

Since the child should be under educational in- 
fluence until he reaches adult life, — eighteen 
or nineteen years of age, — provision must be 
made for voluntary attendance at the continua- 
tion school until that time. With the reduced 
length of a working day in most places in this 
country from twelve hours to ten, to nine, and 
then to eight hours, it is not unreasonable to ask 
young people to attend evening continuation 
81 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

schools, of the type described above, from four 
to six hours a week. In fact, attending evening 
schools would teach young people how to use 
their leisure time. A young person's success or 
failure depends upon his use of his leisure. 

The evening continuation school would embrace 
the courses given in the regular evening elemen- 
tary and evening high schools. The elementary 
continuation school provides instruction for young 
people who have not graduated from the grammar 
school, or who have received an education equiva- 
lent to the eighth grade, and for the non-English- 
speaking pupils. An evening elementary school 
may be organized in the interest of efficiency and 
economy into three departments: First, those 
classes in which English-speaking pupils are 
taking strictly academic work; second, those 
classes in which the pupils' primary aim is to 
learn to speak English; third, those special 
classes that may be authorized to meet distinct 
local needs, like dressmaking, cooking, embroid- 
ery, and a special class for laborers in civil-service 
work. 

The advanced evening continuation-school 

classes may be divided into two groups: First, 

those adapted to meet a demand of those deficient 

in early education who are desirous of making 

82 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

up this deficiency (general continuation classes) ; 
second, those classes which supplement acquired 
skill with technical training that will lead to ad- 
vancement and increased earning power (voca- 
tional continuation classes). 

Experience shows that few adults desire to do 
regular organized academic work. Therefore, the 
academic classes should not be planned for adults, 
but rather for young people who have recently 
left school for economic reasons, or for the day 
continuation classes and for those who desire the 
elements of a grammar- and high-school education. 
It is possible with young people to have a definite 
course with subjects in logical sequence, such as 
arithmetic before algebra, etc. 

For those who have completed the grammar- 
school course or its equivalent, a three-year 
course in high-school subjects should be offered. 
Each pupil should take three subjects three or 
four times a week during the year, including 
English. 

The best educational results are obtained by 
taking three subjects an evening. Great stress 
should be laid upon the fact that without a com- 
mand of language a person is handicapped in life. 
Pupils should be encouraged to take the three- 
year course in English composition and litera- 
83 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

ture. This course should lay great emphasis on 
business English. Latin, French, Spanish, and 
German should be offered to students who have 
the ability to pursue them or may require them 
for entrance to other institutions. It may not 
be necessary to offer all the languages every 
year. Some languages, like Spanish and Ger- 
man, might be offered in alternate years. The 
same is true in mathematics. A great many of 
our leading young men have received sufficient 
training in an evening school to go to college. 
Students should be encouraged to take books 
home and to do considerable outside studying. 

After the pupil has completed the academic 
branches, opportunity should be provided to take 
up the special course in technical and commercial 
branches. Importance should be attached to the 
fact that the time for pupils to study academic 
branches is before eighteen years of age. After 
that period pupils desire to concentrate their at- 
tention on one or two related subjects. The idea 
in mind should be to provide instruction of a 
liberal kind in an interesting manner so that boys 
and girls may receive the elements of a high- 
school education. 

The prevocational and vocational evening con- 
tinuation schools would constitute the regular 

8 4 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

training that is usually given in the evening home- 
making, commercial, and trade classes. 

The most ambitious workers in every industry 
desire to obtain a practical education that will 
advance them in their vocations. The extraordi- 
nary success of the correspondence school in large 
cities is another indication of the desire of the 
many workmen to improve themselves in their 
general vocations. Over sixteen hundred stu- 
dents were enrolled in these schools from one 
city of one hundred thousand inhabitants. The 
disadvantages of instruction by correspondence 
are many, but such instruction is better than 
none at all. There are thousands of men in 
every community intellectually incapable of ben- 
efiting by this course. Not more than three in 
one hundred complete their course; in fact, the 
International Correspondence School admitted, 
in an article published a few years ago in the 
American Machinist, that but 2.6 per cent of 
their students have been awarded a certificate or 
diploma. The vast majority of men enrolling are 
soon discouraged and frequently lose faith in 
their work. 

Evening vocational classes, in order to be most 
effective, must be planned and organized on 
different lines from the day technical classes. 

85 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

This is due to several reasons. The average length 
of a boy's school life until recently was four years, 
and that was before he was twelve years of age; 
consequently those boys who are now industrial 
workers have received little more education than 
that obtained during these four years. Before 
this time the shop and mill were training schools 
for workers. 

When these same boys, later in life, attend 
evening school, they remember very little of the 
academic work they have received earlier in life. 
In addition they are tired after a hard day's work, 
and have, therefore, an intensely practical aim 
in view in attending school, and are unwilling to 
study systematically an entire subject, as might 
be expected with young people in a day school. 
They demand that the instruction shall lead di- 
rectly to the specific things they want to know. 
If they are obliged to spend a month or more 
on preliminary work, the value of which they do 
not immediately discover, they will soon become 
discouraged and leave. 

Then again, mechanics and other tradesmen 
who may, perhaps, have some reputation in their 
trades, and who wish to perfect themselves in 
certain technical lines, do not wish to be grouped 
with younger persons, feeling that such persons, 
86 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

having come recently from the public schools, 
are able to answer questions, use better English, 
and appear to better advantage than they do. In 
other words, adults are often sensitive about the 
comparisons which the younger members of the 
class are apt to make at their expense. 

Every worker attends an evening technical 
class to satisfy a definite need. To illustrate: A 
young apprentice in a machine shop finds diffi- 
culty in reading a blue-print. He enrolls in an 
evening drawing class in order to learn how to 
read a blue-print. The teacher is a mechanical 
draftsman, and he thinks the best way to know 
how to read a blue-print is to be able to make one. 
The young man is taught lettering, how to draw 
straight and curved lines and to make simple 
drawings. The young man's ringers are hardened 
from rough work, and he finds it difficult to ma- 
nipulate the fine drawing instruments. During 
all this time he is receiving in his daily work the 
same reprimands, and is therefore debating in his 
own mind the value of the drawing course. It is 
undoubtedly true that the drawing course this 
teacher outlined is a valuable one for teaching 
mechanical drawing to those who are to be 
draftsmen, but the average apprentice machinist 
such as this young man does not see the direct 
87 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

application of this instruction to his daily work. 
He enrolled in the drawing school for a definite 
purpose. To be sure, it was a narrow one, but, 
nevertheless, it had economic value to him. The 
training in mechanical drawing which a machinist 
needs is not the same as that of the draftsman. 
This young man shows that he needs a course 
in blue-print reading and in arithmetic for ma- 
chinists. 

The same applies to other courses. A number 
of loom-fixers in a worsted mill applied for a 
course in loom-fixing in a textile school. The 
instructor began his lessons in the simplest loom 
— a cotton loom; the worsted loom-fixers soon 
lost interest and left the class in a body. They 
were not interested in cotton looms. Two classes 
should have been formed, one for cotton and 
another for worsted loom-fixing. Hence, evening 
high-school instruction in technical classes should 
be divided into small unit courses so as to satisfy 
a definite need. Just what unit courses should be 
offered in a school may be determined by allow- 
ing one whole week for preliminary registration, 
so that every worker may attend and talk over 
the educational needs of the different indus- 
tries in the community. Then it will be pos- 
sible to determine what unit courses to offer 
88 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

and the content of information to impart to the 
men. 

The first lesson in an evening school should 
be the most interesting one of the course. The 
teacher should show the value of more knowledge 
on the subject by offering an incentive the first 
evening. In this way he can hold the atten- 
tion of the class and win their confidence, and 
at the same time have all of them leave the 
class the first night with some additional in- 
formation. 

Instructors in evening vocational classes should 
be practical men and women with considerable 
trade experience. Considerable shop practice 
should be used in applying the principles under- 
lying the trade. The actual blue-prints, shop 
problems, and methods should be used in this 
course. Subjects that do not find continual ap- 
plication in the trade should be given in the 
advanced rather than in the elementary course. 
The instruction in the various branches of mathe- 
matics should be adapted to meet the needs of 
the machinist, the plumber, and the carpenter. 
How to find the size of a tank does not awaken 
the interest of the carpenter as much as the prob- 
lem involving the same operations dealing with 
the construction of a house. The terms used in 

8 9 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

the schoolroom should be expressed in the lan- 
guage of the shop and the mill. 

All technical students should be classified, as 
far as possible, into vocational classes according 
to their trades; for example, a class in arithmetic 
for engineers and a separate class in the same 
subject for boiler firemen. Again, the textile de- 
signers should have a class in arithmetic called 
cloth calculations. This idea carries out the plan 
of the old trade guild of a few centuries ago. Each 
guild was formed for the purpose of social inter- 
course and mental stimulus. Each trade had its 
own guild. The daily trade experiences of each 
member became the property of all members. 
Discussion relating to the practices of their 
chosen trade occupied their attention. So to-day 
workmen have common trade interests. When 
evening students are grouped according to their 
occupations, they have an opportunity to talk 
over their interests. The teacher should act as a 
leader and draw out of the students their trade 
experiences, and through the expressions of these 
various opinions solve the problems. It may be 
difficult to get students to recite and express 
themselves at the blackboard, but a free discus- 
sion of the point at issue makes the student lose 
his self-consciousness, and before he is aware of 
90 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

it, he is at the board illustrating his particular 
method of solution. Of course, such discus- 
sions should be under the wise guidance of the 
teacher. 

Provision should be made for the students who 
cannot attend but once or twice a week. It 
is quite common for students to stay away 
because they cannot attend "regularly." This 
applies to a great many factory workers. In 
prosperous times the mills are run evenings and 
the employees are expected to work overtime. 
But they can usually get away for one night in 
the week during such times. They cannot always 
tell definitely what nights they will be called 
upon to work. Students who are working over- 
time should be allowed to attend any night dur- 
ing the week after the session is fairly started. 
Such a plan is feasible. Boiler firemen alternate 
in working day and night. A fireman who works 
days this week will work nights next week, and 
so on. In a word, every effort should be made 
on the part of the instructors to accommodate 
the changing time-schedule of the individual 
student, and to awaken within him that self- 
interest in the progress of his school work which 
will enable him to do the very best of which he 
is capable. 

9i 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

Unit courses should be very specific. To illus- 
trate : A course in any branch of cotton manufac- 
ture should not be simply cotton manufacture, 
but divided into units as follows : — 



Picker and card room . . 50 lessons, two hours an evening 
Combing " " " " " 



Drawing and roving 






frames. " 


<( 


tt u u it 


Ring spinning and fin- 






ishing " 


tt 


tt tt it tt 


Mule spinning " 


tt 


tt tt tt tt 


Cotton sampling " 


tt 


it tt tt tt 


Advanced calculations 






in carding and spin- 






ning " 


It 


one hour a week 



Weaving and Warp Preparation Departments 

Spooling, warping, and 
slashing 50 lessons, two hours an evening 

Plain weaving and fix- 
ing 

Fancy weaving and fix- 
ing 

Weaving and fixing 
(French class) 

Weaving and fixing 
(Portuguese class) . . 

Advanced calculations 
inweaving 



92 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

Designing Department 

Elementary designing 
and cloth construc- 
tion 50 lessons, three hours an evening 

Advanced designing 
and cloth construc- 
tion " " " " " " 

Jacquard designing... " " " " " 

Knitting Department 
Special knitting 50 lessons, two hours an evening 

This presentation will serve not only to catch 
the eye, but it will offer an incentive to the tired 
worker to attend the class. 

In addition to unit courses, evening instruction 
should provide for multiple units of subjects 
organized into departments. Each department 
in the school should have a head and one or more 
assistants. Opportunity should be provided for 
a student to take one subject called a " major" 
and one or two related subjects called " minor " 
subjects. To illustrate: A young man enters a 
class for machinists. He rinds difficulty in read- 
ing blue-prints and handling fractions and deci- 
mals. The major subject is machine shop and 
his minor is blue-print reading and arithmetic. 
It is better for a student to take his major and 

93 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

minor subjects in one department. It is this 
major subject which has drawn the student into 
school, and it is this which will keep him, and the 
minor subjects like arithmetic must be closely 
related to the major in order to hold his interest 
in the related academic work. The time to teach 
fractions and decimals will be when they come 
up in connection with shopwork. He sees the 
advantage of arithmetic at the time and becomes 
intensely interested in it. Then the teacher's 
assistant may take a group into another room 
or to a blackboard and explain the related arith- 
metic to them. With a little drill they will profit 
by the instruction. 

Evening technical instruction in order to be 
effective must combine, closely, practice and the- 
ory — practice and thinking about the practice. 
Since the student attends in order to meet some 
definite need, it is usually something closely re- 
lated with his daily work. Practical training in 
his trade affords, in addition to skill, an apper- 
ceptive basis; that is, a background of experience 
illustrating rules, principles, and theories. With- 
out a body of practical experience preceding or 
accompanying it, technical education, in spite of 
the claim that it may be useful in later life, to a 
large degree is a pure abstraction that is neither 
94 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

interesting nor tangible, so that evening technical 
classes should be adapted for those engaged in 
the trades and old enough to profit by the in- 
struction. On the other hand, we must not for- 
get that there are a great many people who are 
"handy" or mechanically inclined, and who are 
not engaged in the trades, but who have been 
able to profit by evening instruction. They have 
used the small amount of instruction received in 
the evening shops in addition to their natural 
ability to obtain positions in the trades. In this 
way evening technical classes may assist mechan- 
ically gifted people not engaged in the trades to 
become proficient in the beginnings of a trade 
so as to obtain a position. The evening technical 
classes act as a port of entry from an unskilled to 
a skilled trade. 

To summarize the above : The advanced even- 
ing continuation course of study should be com- 
posed of single and groups of subjects. By means 
of group courses it is possible to work out a sys- 
tematic course with a definite aim or goal in 
view. 

Recreation 

Formerly children developed their bodies by 
play and by performing the necessary chores 

95 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

around the home, the yard, in the woods and 
fields. The adolescent factory worker does not 
enjoy a Wholesome physical life, one in which the 
whole body is exercised — the heart and the 
lungs. Since these conditions no longer exist, or- 
ganized recreation must be established for the 
things which are now lacking in the environment 
of the child's home and factory life. Therefore, 
continuation schools should provide, in addition 
to academic and technical training, clubs and 
social centers in the school to meet the recrea- 
tional needs of the growing boy and girl. Com- 
munities must establish municipal gymnasiums, 
baths, and recreation centers where young fac- 
tory workers may go and obtain natural exercise, 
so as to counteract the one-sided fatigue due to 
monotonous drudgery of factory life. 

To do this, the architecture of the public 
schools will be greatly affected. They will have 
auditoriums, kindergartens, gymnasiums, shower- 
baths, roof gardens, and roof playgrounds. The 
school, in addition to being a place for the educa- 
tion and amusement of children, will become a 
neighborhood center for parents and others in the 
community. 



9 6 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

Prevocational courses 

Prevocational classes should be established in 
the last three years of the grammar school. The 
school day should be divided into equal parts, 
one half devoted to academic work and the other 
half to industrial work. The aim of this course 
is to provide for the child of twelve years or over 
a combination of academic and industrial instruc- 
tion that will appeal to pupils whose mentality is 
" sluggish " and whose tastes tend toward manual 
instead of formally academic work. It is neces- 
sary to have the academic subjects correlated 
with, and supplemented by, the manual activi- 
ties. A careful study in these classes should be 
made of the aptitude of the children for informa- 
tion imparted about the trades they desire to 
enter. 

The boys' work should include samples or proj- 
ects taken from the trades practiced in the com- 
munity, such as the woodworking, metal-working 
(machine, sheet, and plumbing), printing, etc.; 
and girls should take subjects in the household 
arts. Experience shows that pupils who select 
prevocational work remain at school and become 
interested in the " Three R's" and also receive 
the beginnings of industrial work. They are 

97 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

able to determine intelligently before they leave 
school the type of work they are best fitted to 
pursue. 

Vocational direction 

Since the public school assumes the responsi- 
bility of preparing a young person for a vocation, 
it must also assist him to select a vocation for 
which he is fitted physically and temperamentally. 
This is one of the most serious duties imposed 
upon the public school, because eventually it 
means that the problem of supply and demand of 
labor and the problem of distribution of human 
talent will be placed on the public-school system 
of this country. This is one of the reasons why 
this vital problem should be solved in a careful, 
scientific way, with due regard to each person's 
aptitudes, abilities, ambitions, resources, and 
limitations, and at the same time taking into 
account the relation of these elements to the 
opportunities and conditions of success in the 
different fields of labor. Children should be em- 
ployed in positions for which their health, capac- 
ity, and intellect best adapt them. If this is done, 
it means well-rounded and efficient manhood and 
womanhood. On the other hand, an occupation 
out of harmony with a young person's aptitudes 
98 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

and capacities means inefficiency and a loss to 
both the employer and employee. A large num- 
ber of adults who prove failures in life can trace 
the cause to the lack of proper guidance in both 
school and juvenile employment. 

The vocational direction or guidance depart- 
ment of a public-school system should be a part 
of the organization of the continuation school 
and should be in charge of a director called a 
"vocational counselor," who should have full 
power over the granting of working certificates 
and providing employment for young people who 
desire to go to work. 

A vocational counselor should be a person with 
a sympathetic interest in young people. In ad- 
dition, he should have information in regard to 
the opportunities for work for young people. In 
order to obtain this information the counselor 
should have an appropriate personality to ap- 
proach employers and the ability to do research 
work and to organize this information in proper 
form for use. This may be carried out by di- 
viding vocations into five large classes, the pro- 
fessional, the commercial, the agricultural, the 
industrial, and the household. Under each class 
we may have divisions and subdivisions of oc- 
cupations. A record of qualifications and the 

99 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

supply and demand of different positions should 
be on file. It is well to make a survey of all the 
existing schools and the courses offered to young 
people. A chart may be made illustrating the 
educational opportunities in the community. A 
survey may also be made of the positions open 
to young people by using the form shown on 
the accompanying chart (pp. 102-05), which has 
been used successfully by the National Society 
for the Promotion of Industrial Education. 

In order that the vocational counselor may prop- 
erly look after the welfare of the individual child, 
it is necessary to know definitely the time that he 
should begin to work and the kind of work that 
he is able to do. Physicians tell us that the men- 
tal and physical condition should not be over- 
shadowed by being brought into use before the 
development adapted to such use is established; 
and on the other hand, that functions, both 
mental and physical, are weakened by not being 
brought into use when they are ready to be used. 

This means that the mental condition of the 
child should be carefully determined, to see 
whether the child should be allowed to work at 
all. Before this is done, it is absolutely necessary 
to know the kind of work the boy or girl is to per- 
form. After it is determined by tests that he has 
100 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

the mental equipment and the degree of knowl- 
edge necessary to do a certain form of work, the 
next problem to be solved is whether his physi- 
cal condition is such that this particular kind of 
work will not harm him. Since labor differs in 
character, occupations should be classified, and 
the boy or girl should be allowed to perform only 
the character of work that is best adapted to his 
or her physical condition. 

It is evident, then, that some additional aid 
should be required for determining the fitness of 
an individual, either for his school or physical 
work, beyond the usual superficial examinations 
now conducted for fitness. A very eminent phy- 
sician on children's diseases, the late Dr. Thomas 
M. Rotch, for a number of years made a study of 
means of determining the relation of physical fit- 
ness to certain degrees of labor and to school work. 

The close relation which is known to exist be- 
tween physical growth and the development of 
the epiphyses led him to make some investigation 
by means of the Roentgen rays on the living 
anatomy of early life during the different stages 
of development. A study of a large number of 
cases showed that under normal conditions all 
the centers of ossification progressed with com- 
parative regularity, and that the degree., of 

101 






1 

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C3 O 




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EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

development of the wrists and hands represented 
to a fair degree that of the entire body framework. 
This correspondence of the development of the 
wrists and hands to that of the rest of the skele- 
ton is especially fortunate, as it is evident that 
the wrists and hands are the most available parts 
for routine examination in a large number of 
cases. This anatomic relation has been substan- 
tiated by other physicians of high standing. 

Similar tests maybe used to determine whether 
the child has a predisposition to any disease, etc., 
so that a reliable and very practical method of 
conducting a physical examination may be made 
in which results will show whether the child has 
the proper physical development to perform phys- 
ical work of a certain character. This method of 
physical examination is at present conducted by 
the United States Government at the Naval Acad- 
emy. Children with any physical weaknesses 
should be encouraged to go into occupations that 
are compatible with their physical condition. 

Placement Bureau — Occupations and the 
opportunities 

When a child applies for a working certificate 
he should be influenced to stay in school. If it is 
necessary to earn some money, part-time rather 
106 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

than full-time employment should be provided. 
Children should be advised to make the most of 
the "blind-alley" occupations that are open to 
them at that time and to attend continuation 
school and prepare for better positions. 

Since the knowledge and training imparted to 
a child is to prepare him for life, the school should 
follow up the boys and girls who leave and see 
how successfully the children have been prepared. 
The school is to judge by the success and failure 
of the children who are out in the school of life. 
A continuation-school teacher should be assigned 
to look after a definite group, in addition to the 
regular school work. 

Information relating to vocational life may be 
taught under the head of civics. There is a very 
intimate connection between vocational success 
and good citizenship. Every successful citizen 
should be an efficient producer and should render 
service to the community. Included in the course 
should be material relating to the economic activ- 
ities of the community, which should include the 
history and opportunities, etc., and all the posi- 
tions in the industries. In this way children will 
be taught their industrial obligations and oppor- 
tunities. 

In fact, every subject in the courses of study is 
107 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

susceptible of an industrial or vocational inter- 
pretation. Teachers have numbers of opportuni- 
ties to speak to the children in terms of industrial- 
ism and citizenship. Frequent excursions should 
be made to industries to obtain first-hand infor- 
mation. History should be centered around the 
growth of industries as successfully as it has 
covered literature, politics, and the careers of 
successful generals, statesmen, etc. 



108 



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A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

Millwrighting 

This course is adapted to boys of limited aca- 
demic ability working in " blind-alley" positions in 
factories and mills. This instruction should be pro- 
vided for two years on a full-time or four years on 
a half-time basis. , 

The following course of study is being carried out in 
the Fall River Technical High School: — 

Course of Study {two years) 

Time allot- 
ment 
(per cent) 
English, history, civics, etc., shop mathe- 
matics, sketching and blue-print working 20 

Laboratory practice and observation of the 
following subjects: concrete and masonry, 
vocational chemistry and physics, hydrau- 
lics and plumbing. General knowledge, 
rather than specific ability is required in 
these subjects 30 

Shop practice in the following subjects: 
Rough carpentry and pattern-making, gen- 
eral repair machine work, care of belts and 
gears, care of motors and dynamos, and 
electrical wiring of a rough character, 
painting, glazing and plumbing 50 

In every manufacturing community there is a 
demand in the factories for a type of millwright, or 

125 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

"handy man," who is able to do rough carpentry and 
pattern-making, general repair machine work, to 
take care of belts and gears, motors and dynamos, to 
do painting and glazing and electrical wiring of a 
rough character. This work does not demand the skill 
of a tool-maker or cabinet-maker, and will appeal to 
the boy of ordinary mechanical ability. 

Method of teaching. The method of teaching must 
be based upon the existence of a maintenance prob- 
lem in a factory. Some work of this kind can, no 
doubt, be found in every school, and in order to make 
the work efficient, it is probable that some outside 
sources of supply can be found. Arrangements should 
be made to let the boys work on a part-time basis in 
a factory, or have them, one at a time, spend some 
time in a mill at least watching work of this kind 
while it is being carried on. In order to secure the 
highest degree of correlation, it is desirable that the 
first-year shop work be based upon the project method ; 
that during the second year, so far as practicable, 
the technical work be separated from the shopwork 
and handled upon a laboratory basis. It is needless 
to point out that in general the greater the degree of 
correlation the better. 

Machine shopwork. Repair machine work differs 
from the regular production work chiefly in the lack 
of special machines in equipment, and in the fact 
that the machinists usually go with their jobs from 
machine to machine. In many cases the equipment 
is either inadequate or antiquated, and they have to 
exercise considerable ingenuity in doing their work 
126 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

with the means at their disposal. These conditions 
should be duplicated as nearly as possible in the shop- 
work of this course. The course should include such 
work as ordinary operations on the sensitive and 
heavy drill press, milling, plain and simple index 
milling, including the cutting of plain gears, plain 
shaper work, and considerable lathe work, including 
work on the cutting lathe. 

Blacksmithing. This work could be adequately 
carried through with one or two small portable forges 
placed in the machine shop. Work of this kind 
should include bracing and some hardening and 
tempering. 

Electrical work. The electrical work should include 
a study of the gross anatomy of the dynamo and 
motor. The pupils should learn the names and func- 
tions of parts, assemble and disassemble motors, and 
should become familiar with method of control, re- 
versing, starting, etc., low tension work with num- 
ber 1 8 wire; the usual series of board problems can be 
worked out with bells, annunciators, etc. Practice 
should be given in wiring, exposed wiring of the mill 
type, including drilling in concrete and masonry, and 
some work with conduits, connecting-up dynamos 
and motors according to the instructions furnished 
with these machines. House wiring, as distinguished 
from mill wiring, should not be attempted to any ex- 
tent. Maintenance work or interior circuits, includ- 
ing maintenance and simple repairs on dynamos and 
motors, should also be included. Considerable practi- 
cal work can be found in the school itself. This can be 
127 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

supplemented by outside work through cooperation 
of the mills or from the school department. 

Carpentry work. Carpentry work should be of the 
character required of the mill machinist. The boy 
should carry the job through, both at the bench and, 
so far as safety permits, at the machines. Work 
should be entirely in the cheaper woods and should not 
call for a high degree of accuracy or finish. The fol- 
lowing subjects should be covered in the course: Butt 
lap, and half-lap joint (no dovetailing); putting up 
rough partitions, and flooring; building stages and 
scaffolding, boxes and trucks. The aim is to turn 
out a comparatively rough, handy carpenter, and not 
a cabinet-maker; hence furniture-making should not 
be included. 

Steam piping. The object of this work should be 
to turn out a mechanic who can cut the ordinary iron 
piping and who knows how to cut threads so as to 
make a tight joint, working from a sketch plan. It 
should include the use of the hack-saw, the cold- 
chisel, hand-dies for threading, and the operations of 
making up a threaded and union joint with different 
types of valves, elbows, tees, etc. This work cannot 
very well be done on an exercise basis, and therefore 
should be included in the shopwork, because the only 
way to test the job is by putting steam into it. 

Pattern-making. The mill machinist is often called 
upon to make simple patterns, mainly where a piece 
of repair work is needed. For example, a gear breaks 
and a simple pattern is made from the broken gear, 
sent to a local foundry, and the casting is made in the 
128 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

machine shop. Usually the important factor here is 
time, rather than extreme care in the waste of iron. 
Solid patterns and simple cord patterns cover all the 
demands of this course. These patterns should be 
made in the cheap wood, without extreme regard to 
accuracy. Instruction should include the use of the 
shrink rule for iron and brass, and provision should be 
made for the boy who has made the pattern to visit 
the factory, so that he will understand the process 
of making the mould. 

Painting and glazing. The aim of this work is 
merely to turn out a worker who can set an ordinary 
pane of glass. Instruction would therefore include 
removing broken glass, cleaning out the putty and 
old tacks, putting in the new glass, tacking and putty- 
ing the work. 

Concrete and masonry. Concrete : mixing, control of 
properties of concrete by changing the ingredients, 
good and bad mixtures for different purposes, pour- 
ing, setting, forming, dressing, etc., making paths, 
concrete forms of different kinds, as opportunity 
offers. Masonry : brick, hollow, tile, etc., laying, bind- 
ing, arching, taking down old brickwork, the laying 
to line of masonry, mortar, the ingredients of mortar, 
control, conditions affecting settling, etc. This work 
should be largely laboratory in character, following 
the lines of the New York Trade School, where work 
of this kind is first set up and then torn down. This 
should be supplemented by some construction work. 

Engines and boilers. The aim of this course is to 
acquaint the pupil, in a general way, with the con- 
129 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

struction, operation, and function of steam units. 
This should include a general knowledge of names 
and functions of parts, and of the slide valve engine, 
the cross-compound engine, functions of accessories, 
such as feed pumps, injectors, gauge glasses, steam 
gauges, ash-pits, different types of boilers, etc. Lab- 
oratory study along these lines can be carried on with 
a large number of materials secured from the junk 
heap and fitted for this purpose through the melting 
out of certain parts, so as to include the insides. In 
addition, a study of the gas engine should be included. 

Drawing, The aim of this course is to give some 
degree of familiarity with reading all sorts of plans, — 
piping plans, electrical wiring plans, machine-shop 
blue-prints, carpentry plans, plumbing plans, etc. 
(i) Exercises in reading simple plans of all the above; 
(2) exercises in sketching layouts, especially where 
the pupil is required to trace out a circuit, electrical, 
steam, or plumbing, etc. ; (3) elements of mechanical 
drawing, simple work in the use of instruments and 
projections. 

Trade mathematics. This course should include 
elementary instruction in rough trade methods of 
computing material, such as lumber, brick, concrete, 
time, cost, etc., as given in Vocational Mathematics, 
published by D. C. Heath & Co., Boston, Massa- 
chusetts. 

Vocational science. The vocational science may be 
taught on a laboratory basis, with practical demon- 
strations. It should include a rather general knowl- 
edge of a number of the simpler facts of physics and 
130 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

chemistry as applied to trades, such as the effect of 
temperature upon material, expansion, contraction, 
melting, boiling, distillation, a little study of light, 
based upon the taking of photographs, properties of 
metals, etc., and a notion of the terms used in hy- 
draulics, such as "head of water," "water flow," etc., 
which should be based upon a study of the local 
water-supply system. Pupils should be taught to ex- 
plain practical questions, such as why concrete sets; 
how a furnace is built to give good combustion; what 
makes steam pressure; how it is controlled; what 
makes a dry boiler burst; how a fusible plug works; 
why a saw-tooth roof is used on a weave shed to get 
good light; how electric lights are laid out in order to 
give proper illumination, etc. 



A Suggestive Continuation School Course in Home-making 

(Used in the Fall River Technical High School) 

Arithmetic in relation to: — l 
I. Dressmaking, millinery. 
II. Personal expenditure. 
III. Household. 
IV. Business. 

English : — 

I. Correction and improvement of everyday speech. 
II. Personal and business correspondence. • 

1 See Vocational Mathematics for Girls. D. C. Heath & Co., 
Boston, Mass. 

131 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

III. Cultivation of a taste for reading. 
IV. Use of a typewriter. 

Civics and History : — 

Study of local history and government. 

Study of history applied to the needs of the pupils. 

Women's responsibilities. 

Needlework : — ■ 

I. Dressmaking, embroidery, etc. 
II. Millinery. 

Textiles: — * 
Study of Fabrics: — 
I. Name. 
II. Cost. 

III. Durability. 

IV. Uses. 

V. Distinguishing qualities. 
VI. Laundry. 

Effect of hot and cold water on fabrics. 
Plain washing, drying, ironing. 
Use of chemicals. 

Washing and drying of delicate fabrics, em- 
broideries, laces. 

Design: — 

• Art as applied to a woman's clothing: — 
I. Color. 
II. Line. 

III. Fabric. 

IV. Appropriateness. 

1 See Textiles. D. C. Heath & Co., Boston, Mass. 
132 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

Home furnishing: — 
Selection of furniture in relation to: — 
I. Beauty. 
II. Economy. 

III. Suitability. 

IV. Sanitation — Sweeping and dusting living-rooms. 

Washing floors, walls, woodwork, 

windows. 
Care of carpets and rugs. 
Chamber work. 
Care of garbage. 
Care of plumbing. 
Ventilation. 
Water and ice supply. 
Disinfection. 

Cooking: — 
Economy and management of the kitchen: — 
I. Plain cooking. 
II. Food values. 

III. Simple menus. 

IV. Dining-room work. 

Care of the sick — leading to nursing: — 1 
Food for convalescents. 
Moving the sick, in bed, out of bed, etc. 
First aid to the injured. 
Adjustment of light, heat, and air to the sick. 
Sick-room conveniences. 

Observational study of house and hotel, kitchens, 
dining-rooms, furnishing, laundries, manufac- 
tories, hospitals, house constructions, etc. 



133 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

Suggestive Vocational Continuation Course for Girls 
(Adapted from Worcester Trade School for Girls) 

Two-year Course 

Fifty per cent of the time should be devoted to shop- 
work in one of the following or additional trades: — 
i. Sewing: — 

a. Plain sewing by hand and by machine. 

b. Fine hand-sewing and embroidery. 

c. Plain dressmaking. 

d. Advanced dressmaking. 

Making of fancy afternoon and evening 
gowns of silk, broadcloth, chiffon, voile, etc. 

2. Millinery: — 

a. Making of wire and buckram frames. 

b. Making of bandeaux, folds, bindings, etc 

c. Fancy trimmings and novelties. 

d. Trimming of hats. 

3. Electric power machine operating: — 

a. Plain sewing. 

b. Underwear. 

c. House dresses and shirt waists. 

d. Special machine work. 

1. Use of buttonhole machine. 

2 . Use of two-needle gauge machine for corset 
work. 

3. Use of knife tucker. 

The other fifty per cent of the time should be devoted 
to the following academic and physical studies: — 

134 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 



Academic Work 

First Year 

i. Trade arithmetic — (not given all year except to 
girls backward in arithmetic). 

2. English — oral and written. 

a. Business letters. 

b. Compositions based on trade work. 

3. Spelling — trade terms, phrases and words in com- 
mon use. 

4. Writing. 

5. Citizenship — social ethics. 

The above subjects are not necessarily presented 
parallel to each other. One subject such as arithme- 
tic is presented for one term of fourteen weeks or 
two terms, as necessary, and another substituted 
as advisable. 

Art. 

1. Color scales. 

2. Line, such as arrangement of tucks, rows of insertion, 
etc. 

3. Spacing and proportion by arrangement of trim- 
mings, etc. 

4. Designs for garments, trimmings, hats, etc. 

Physical Education. 

1. Short drills in marching, wand drills, etc., for co- 
operation. 

2. Games such as tag, pass ball, volley ball, etc. 

3. Folk-dancing. 

4. Hygiene. 

135 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 



Second Year 

Advanced cooking (elective). 
Class instructions. 
i. Advanced trade arithmetic given for one term of 
fourteen weeks. 

a. Shop organization. 

b. Estimates of material for garments. 

c. Economy of material. 

d. Estimates for prices on single garments and 
large orders such as underwear, etc. 

2. English. 

a. Accurate descriptions of work, etc. 

b. Directions for making garments or parts of 
garment. 

3. Textiles. 

a. Study of weaves, textures, adulterations, etc., 
through practical tests. 

b. Short history of common textiles — cotton, 
linen, wool and silk. 

4. Industrial history and geography as related to wo- 
men's work. 

5. Citizenship — practical civics. 

6. Apportionment of income — expenditure. 

Art (elective). 

1. Applied design — designs for dress trimmings, hat 
trimmings, buckles, bands, etc. 

2. Costume designing. 

3. Designing of hats. 

Physical education. 
1. Continuation of first year's work. 

136 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 



Suggestive Courses for Evening General Continuation 
School 

The classes for non-English people should be divided 
into four divisions: First, the literate foreigner who can 
speak English; second, the literate foreigner who cannot 
speak English; third, the illiterate English who can speak 
English; fourth, the illiterate foreigner who cannot speak 
English. The first two divisions may be divided into four 
grades: Beginners, intermediate, subgraduating, and 
graduating classes. The following represents the topics 
that should be taught: — 

Beginners 
Arithmetic, English, physiology and hygiene, reading, 
spelling, and writing. A large amount of the time is spent 
upon reading and arithmetic. 

" Suggestive Courses for both Day and Evening General 
Continuation Schools 

Intermediate 
Arithmetic, English, geography, physiology and hy- 
giene, reading, spelling, and writing. A large amount of 
the time is spent on arithmetic, reading, and English. 
Pupils who can read and write should be able to do the 
work of this grade. 

Subgraduating 

Arithmetic, English, geography, history, physiology 
and hygiene, reading, spelling, and writing. Earnest 
pupils who have left day schools from the fifth or sixth 
grades should be able to do the work of this grade. 

,*37 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 



Graduating 

Arithmetic, civil government, English, geography, his- 
tory, physiology and hygiene, reading, spelling, and writ- 
ing. Earnest and mature pupils who have left day school 
from the seventh or eighth grade should be able to do the 
work of this grade. 

Suggestive Course of Study for Advanced Evening 
Continuation School 

Advanced evening continuation schools should in- 
clude: — 

i. Course of academic studies in which the aim is 
to encourage young people, between sixteen and 
twenty who are working days, to pursue a sys- 
tematic course for three years. It is possible to 
fit ambitious young people for higher institu- 
tions. 

£. Course of commercial subjects, such as book- 
keeping as a major course, penmanship and 
commercial arithmetic as minors, or stenog- 
raphy as a major and correspondence and type- 
writing for minors. These subjects should be 
pursued two years so that attention can be con- 
centrated upon them. The instruction and 
methods should be definite, practical, up-to- 
date, and such as are used by successful experi- 
enced men in commercial and financial offices. 
Practical talks by successful business men 
should be given with frequent visits to model 
commercial offices. 

138 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

Courses in a group or single units of industrial 
or technical subjects. These may be divided 
into a number of parts, such as the metal trades, 
textile trades, building trades, shoe trades, etc. 
The work may consist of hand or machine tool 
work or the practical mechanics. Great care 
should be exercised to see that the appropriate 
courses in the sciences and mathematics are pro- 
vided as related subjects. Evening shopwork 
courses will offer a port of entry for young men 
in "blind-alley" positions to some skilled trade. 
Courses in home-making and trade work should 
be offered to women. 

Course of study in agricultural and rural science. 
Evening courses can be arranged, first, to meet 
the needs of farmers, and, second, to meet the 
needs of mechanics, business men, and others 
who have a small garden attached to the home. 



139 




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A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

Suggestive Evening Courses 



Municipal government 

Economics 

Sociology 

Civics 

Clay modeling 

Shopwork or manual training for boys 

Arts and crafts 

Business English 

English composition and rhetoric 

Literature 

German 

French 

Latin 

Spanish 

Elementary algebra 

Plane geometry 

Solid geometry 

Trigonometry 

Physical geography 

Public speaking and elocution 

Elements of music 



Penmanship 

Business correspondence 

Bookkeeping 

Accountancy 

Stenography 

Typewriting 

Business and commercial law 

Office boys' training 

Finance and investments 



145 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

Money and banking 

Importing and exporting 

Railway transportation 

Advertising 

Real estate 

Salesmanship 

Journalism 

Freehand drawing for illustration 

Window trimming 

Sign-painting 

Sign-lettering and show-card writing 

Art in house furnishing and decorating 



Mechanics' business arithmetic 

Care of buildings 

Industrial design for stonecutters 

Architectural drawing for architects '"* 

Plan reading and estimating for contractors, masons 

Building construction for builders and contractors 

Masonry construction for builders 

Structural work in steel for builders 

Machine drawing, and arithmetic for machinists 

Blue-print reading for machinists 

Machine design for machinists 

Locomotive and car design for draftsmen 

Practical electricity 

Electric wiring 

Electric railways for linemen 

Telegraphy 

Shop mathematics for machinists 

Shop mathematics for engineers 

Applied mechanics and strength of material for buildera 

Applied chemistry for different trades 

Metallurgy of iron and steel for beginners in iron works 

Marine engineering 

Locomotive engineering 

146 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

Stationary steam engineering or engineer's license 

Boiler firing 

Ship drafting 

Navigation 

Surveying 

First aid to the injured 

Carpentry and building 

Pattern-making 

Foundry work 

Forging 

Tool-making 

Machine-shop practice 

Sheet-metal work 

Boiler-making 

Metal roofing 

Tinsmithing 

Plumbing 

Heating and ventilation 

Steam and hot-water fitting 

Bricklaying 

Plastering 

House-painting 

Fresco-painting 

Enginemen 

Locomotive firemen 

Conductors 

4 

Forestry 

Soils 

Field crops 

Grain grading and judging 

Rural economy and farm management 

Insects, pests, and plant diseases 

Animal husbandry 

Poultry husbandry 

Dairy husbandry 

147 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

Methods of teaching 

The methods of teaching and the information 
imparted to the students of the prevocational 
and vocational continuation schools must differ 
from those of the regular public-school system. 
In the general continuation school, the methods 
will not differ to any great degree from those of 
the regular evening high schools, but in the voca- 
tional classes it is absolutely necessary to observe 
the principles of teaching that have been used 
successfully for boys and girls of this group. If 
we look back upon the age of the apprenticeship 
in both the shop and the home, we shall find 
effective methods of teaching. The information 
necessary for positions in industry, commerce, 
or the home may be obtained from the actual 
requirements of the positions. 

The apprentice was taught by actual partici- 
pation in trade work, by imitation, and by sug- 
gestions, followed by the information necessary 
to do the work intelligently. Comenius, in the 
seventeenth century, reminds school teachers, 
for instance, that "artisans do not detain their 
apprentices with theories, but set them to do 
actual work at an early stage; thus they learn to 
forge by forging, to carve by carving, to paint by 
148 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

painting. . . . Mechanics do not begin by drum- 
ming rules into their apprentices. They take 
them into the workshop and bid them look at the 
work that has been produced, and then, when 
they wish to imitate this, they place tools in their 
hands, and show them how they should be used 
and held. Then, if they make mistakes, they 
give them advice and correct them, often more 
by example than by mere words, and, as the 
facts show, the novices easily succeed in their 
imitation. " Similarly, Obadiah Walker in his 
work, Of Education , says: "In manual arts the 
master first showeth his apprentice what he is to 
do; next, works it himself, in his presence, and 
gives him rules, and then sets him to work." 

The master craftsman taught and arranged 
his trade skill and information in a way different 
from the logical order of the pure arts and sci- 
ences. In addition, each journeyman was not 
allowed to have more than two apprentices. The 
instruction was individual to a great extent. 
Since it is impossible to conduct a public school 
on this basis, it is necessary to have methods 
adapted to a class of not more than fifteen pupils 
to a teacher. The shop work should be organized, 
as in a commercial shop, into a series of jobs which, 
for want of a better name, we will call "projects." 
149 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

The old-fashioned apprenticeship system fur- 
nishes us with the steps for teaching effectively 
the useful arts to boys and girls. The method 
may be divided into three parts, demonstration 
by the teacher, practice steps by the pupil, and 
the test given by the teacher to each pupil. The 
demonstration should include the preliminary 
talk to the pupils on such points as the common 
names of tools; use of tools, blue-prints, or sets 
of patterns; measurements or steps in shop prac- 
tice, or sewing, etc. The practice steps should 
follow the demonstration and should consist of 
one pupil performing the work under the direc- 
tion of the teacher in the presence of the class. 
The teacher should correct all mistakes made by 
this pupil and offer suggestions at the same time. 
The last step should be a test given by the teacher 
to a pupil. The teacher should follow each pupil's 
work and give individual instruction. Scrap 
pieces of stock, etc., may be used for drill on cer- 
tain points that the pupil fails to grasp. The 
pupil should be taught, as was the apprentice of 
old, on projects that have commercial value, and 
the instruction should be carried out in a com- 
mercial way. 

The old-fashioned teacher has not followed out 
this scheme in teaching manual training. In- 

150 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

stead, he has analyzed the operations by the 
different tradesmen and has grouped them into 
exercises of logical sequence. In doing this, he 
has robbed them of their practical value and of 
the interest they have to the child. The exercise 
method may be used in teaching large classes, 
but fails to give the pupils the true shop and 
commercial spirit and provides a false idea of 
economy. 

English, history, mathematics, science, draw- 
ing, etc., may be taught very effectively by cor- 
relating them with the subjects that the pupil is 
most interested in — shopwork. The practical 
work in the school, shop, or factory, should con- 
sist of at least fifty per cent of the total school 
time. Every project or job the pupils work on 
involves some English, mathematics, accounts, 
history, science, etc. The power that drives the 
machine involves some part of science and mathe- 
matics. After the pupil has worked on a machine 
or project, there is a natural curiosity to know 
something more about it. Then is the time to ex- 
plain abstract principles of science, mathematics, 
etc. This method of teaching — practice and think- 
ing about the practice — is the most effective way 
in which a great many young people, who have 
had difficulty in mastering abstract principles 

151 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

and themes as taught by the old book-method of 
memorizing, have been made able to grasp them. 
The practice or observation should always pre- 
cede the theory, and the two intimately associ- 
ated together, so that each shall constitute an 
approach and reinforcement. This is a very dif- 
ferent method from that taught to the abstract- 
minded pupils in the general continuation schools, 
and to those who are able to grasp abstract prin- 
ciples of drawing, pure mathematics, and pure 
sciences before application. There is a slight 
justification for abstract teaching in the general 
continuation school and in the liberal courses 
in the regular schools, because it is desirable for 
pupils who may attend higher technical schools 
to deal with engineering problems in the abstract, 
but there is no justification for it in the prevoca- 
tional classes or vocational continuation courses. 

In other words, the method of teaching boys 
and girls in this type of school is by induction. 
This is the natural way of learning — observing, 
comparing, and classifying and forming knowl- 
edge, because* it awakens interest. Reflection 
will show the pupil cause and effect. 

The step to be followed in the first lessons of 
the academic department is to assign a pupil a 
project and hold him responsible not only for the 
152 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

manipulation of the power and hand tools, but for 
all related knowledge of mathematics, drawing, 
shop science, etc., connected with the project. 
He should be able or obliged to make a drawing 
of it, read a blue-print of it, solve the problems 
in mathematics that may arise, and explain the 
principles of science involved in all the operations 
performed in carrying out the project. In addi- 
tion, he should be able to write a report on the 
project, showing his ability to express his ideas 
and to spell the words. 

In order to develop boys and girls to the best 
advantage during the period of adolescence, it is 
absolutely necessary to observe the principles of 
the successful boy and girl life and apply them. 
The most important period in every child's life 
is that between the ages of twelve and eighteen 
years. It is during that period that the child 
forms his ideals and habits of conduct which will 
control him in his later years. Every boy has 
during his adolescence one very marked char- 
acteristic, and that is to go with boys of similar 
interests, to form groups and clubs. All boys de- 
sire to be men of achievement. One of the strong- 
est means of interesting a motor-minded child 
in English, history, and civics is to combine rec- 
reation and education under the form of an 

,153 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

organization of a club. Each club may have a 
number of activities under different pupil lead- 
ers, the teacher acting with the leader. 

English may be taught by reading books and 
magazines, and by attending talks. 

Books 

A boy is least fitted to choose the books which 
are desirable for him to read. His interests at 
various ages decidedly influence his reading. A 
boy's library should supplement his early life. 
As the boy grows, his interests change from those 
of boyhood to those of manhood. That is the 
reason why travel, adventure, invention, biog- 
raphy, love-stories, and outdoor books appeal to 
the interests and needs of boys at various ages. 
They should read carefully and slowly so as to 
absorb what they read. Story- telling, with sug- 
gestions where more can be read, is helpful. Not 
all magazines are interesting to boys. They are 
interested in magazines of outdoor life, invention, 
handicraft, etc. Practical talks appeal to working 
boys. The talk should be informal, providing 
definite information, new incentives for effort, 
and definite character-building. A talk should 
suggest a subject on which the pupil will do 
further reading. . 

154 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

One of the activities of a club may be to study 
nature. Excursions may be conducted occasion- 
ally on Saturday afternoons to the country to 
study the formation of the land, birds, insects, 
plants, and trees. 

Civics 

Every person in this country has more or less 
to do with the Government. This is the only 
country in the world that has given to every male 
citizen of ordinary intelligence the right to vote 
and to decide how our Government shall be con- 
ducted. Therefore, the continuation school should 
make a special feature of civic training. Those at- 
tending it should be taught how to appreciate the 
ideals of citizenship in this country. How often 
have we seen within the last few years a great 
many of our citizens led into practices and con- 
ceptions that are dangerous to democracy. 

Suggestive Topics for Civics 

A. The Individual and the Home and the School. 

i. The Relation of the Home and the School to 

each other and to the Community. 
2. The Beginnings of the Community. 

a. The School. 

b. The Occupations of Men and Women. 

155 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

3. The Individual and the Local Community. 

a. Street Cleaning Department. 

b. Police Department. 

c. Fire Prevention. 

d. Children and Work. 

4. The Individual and the City. 

a. The Community. 

b. The Geography of the Community. 

c. The People of the Community. 

d. The Health of the Community. 

e. Defectives, Dependents, etc., of the Com- 
munity. 

/. Education of the Community. 
g. Civic Beauty of the Community. 
h. Vocational Life of the Community. 

5. The Individual and the State and the Union. 

a. Public Utilities. 

b. The Business Life of the Community. 

c. The Government. 

d. Vocational Life. 

e. The Course of Study in the Higher Schools. 

In the girls' department of the Fall River 
Technical High School arithmetic is taught by 
means of problems dealing with the ordinary 
affairs of life; that is to say, problems that a girl 
or woman would meet in the trade in which she 
is engaged, and in the home. 

The subjects of the problems are chosen within 
the limits of reality. Every woman, no matter 

156 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

what station of life she holds, has more or less 
business to transact. She has been taught interest 
in the grammar school and can find the amount of 
$999 for 9 years, 9 months, 9 days at 9! per cent, 
but how many girls can tell you what $500 de- 
posited in the Lawrence Savings Bank, January 1, 
1 91 5, would amount to to-day? The girls are 
taught how to read gas meters, and to figure how 
much is due the gas company, if the bill is paid 
early enough to get the discount. 

Grammar-school arithmetic teaches how to find 
the amount of a note, but does not give the pen- 
alty or inform pupils of the responsibility attached 
to signing a note. 

Problems in the cost of living are firmly im- 
pressed. For example, how will a woman divide 
her income to dress " well " even when that in- 
come seems too small to divide? 



Representative Problems 

1. I put $500 in the Lawrence Savings Bank, Jan- 
uary 1, 191 5. I have drawn nothing out. How 
much have I in the bank? (Banking.) 

2. A man buys property worth $3000. He takes out 
a $2000 mortgage. What will the interest on the 
mortgage be? If he does not pay the interest, how 
long can he hold the property? (Mortgage.) 

157 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

3. Many are asking for lemonade at the lunch coun- 
ter. What must we charge to cover the cost? 
(Little or no data given.) (Cooking.) 

4. How much Hamburg do you need for the ruffle on 
your petticoat? What will it cost? (Dressmaking.) 

5. How much long cloth will you require to make a 
10-inch flounce on your skirt? (Dressmaking.) 

6. Make a list of articles for wearing apparel you 
will need for a year. Keep the cost within $50. 
(Dressing.) 

7. Which is the better off financially, a girl earning 
$4 a week as a housemaid or earning $7 a week as 
a salesgirl? (Income.) 

A considerable number of arithmetical problems 
set for girls deal with household affairs, domestic 
economy, and the results of thrift. When this 
industrial arithmetic for girls is well taught, it 
helps to introduce into the homes that methodical 
spirit which regulates expenses by receipts, in- 
spires foresight, and makes the product of thrift 
fruitful. 

Visual instruction should be used as far as 
possible in a continuation school. Psychologists 
tell us that eighty per cent of the sense percep- 
tions of older children and adults reach them 
through the eye. Eye impressions are eighty per 
cent stronger than other sense perceptions, as 
hearing, etc. Therefore, one of the most efficient 

158 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

methods of educating young people is by means 
of the moving picture. Pictures, charts, outside 
trips, lantern slides, and models should be used 
as far as possible in teaching pupils academic 
subjects. 

The above methods apply to the day continu- 
ation school. When the pupil changes from the 
day to the evening continuation school, a slightly 
different arrangement must be followed on ac- 
count of the age of the pupil, his educational 
needs, and the time devoted to different subjects. 

A large number of pupils in our elementary 
general continuation schools are immigrants who 
cannot speak English. The average evening 
school teacher finds very little difficulty in teach- 
ing the literate immigrant, but there is great 
difficulty in teaching illiterate immigrants who 
can and cannot speak English. The reason for 
this is that the teachers in our regular evening 
schools are day teachers, and they carry over 
into the evening classes a great deal of the meth- 
ods and book material from the day schools. 
They begin to tell the names of different objects 
in the room, names of different pieces of clothing 
they are wearing, something about George 
Washington, etc. The newly arrived immigrant 
leaves the school because he is not interested in 

159 



EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

the information imparted. The people with 
whom he lives and associates speak his native 
tongue, and his heroes are not George Washing- 
ton and Abraham Lincoln, but the heroes of his 
own country. 

The most effective method of teaching the 
newly arrived immigrant is to teach him the 
English, the arithmetic, and the information he 
needs most. He attends an evening school, like 
all adults, with an intensely practical aim in 
view — to meet his own daily needs. If he is a 
weaver in the mill, he is anxious to know how to 
use sufficient English to talk about his work in 
the mill: to learn how to pronounce the names of 
the parts of the machine he is working on, the 
different devices used by him; to be able to count 
the different bobbins up to a hundred; to count 
his pay; to be able to write his name, the number 
of his loom, or the style of the fabric he is weav- 
ing. This is the kind of English, arithmetic, writ- 
ing, and other information that this pupil is 
interested in. He has, to be sure, a selfish motive 
but it has great economic value to him. It is very 
helpful to the teacher to have the objects you are 
discussing in the room and to have the pupils 
go through the lessons dramatically. Foreigners 
should be classified in evening school according 
1 60 



A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

to their vocations (trades), and should be ad- 
vanced according to the time or progress that 
they have made since they have been in this 
country. A few weeks of instruction devoted to 
English, arithmetic, and other subjects relating 
to his daily work would form an apperceptive 
basis for the future lessons on George Washing- 
ton, and other information in history, civics, and 
English necessary for him to become a citizen. 
As far as possible the dramatic method should 
be used in teaching the pupils. 



OUTLINE 

I. THE NEGLECTED NE'ER-DO-WELL 

i. What the Massachusetts Survey shows ... I 

2. "Blind-alley" occupations 3 

3. The character of juvenile work 4 

II. THE QUALITIES OF THE NE'ER-DO-WELL 

1. What Society demands 8 

2. The old juvenile apprenticeship 9 

3. The great changes since 11 

4. The characteristics of the Ne'er-Do- Well child . 13 

III. THE TRADITIONAL SCHOOL'S FAILURE TO 
ADAPT 

1. The abstract-minded and the motor-minded 
children 16 

2. The test for promotion in the school is a literary 
one 18 

3. The inefficiency of the traditional school system 19 

4. Its failure to educate the immigrant .... 20 

5. The way in which he is educated effectively . . 23 

IV. THE SPECIAL NEEDS OF THIS CLASS 

1. Manual training attached to each grade ... 26 

2. Academic subjects correlated with the shop work 

for pupils twelve years of age and over ... 26 

3. The school and factory should cooperate ... 29 

162 



OUTLINE 

4. Some kind of part-time education for juvenile 
factory workers 29 

5. They need physical development as well as men- 
tal development 30 

6. Intelligent selection of an occupation .... 31 

V. EDUCATIONAL ADAPTATIONS ABROAD 

1. Germany's success is due to efficient educational 
methods 32 

2. Compulsory continuation schools 34 

3. Munich Vocational Continuation School for 
Machinists' Apprentices 40 

4. England's half-time system of education ... 59 

5. Edinburgh's cooperation between school and 
employment agency 61 

VI. SOME AMERICAN EXPERIMENTS 

1. Survey at Minneapolis ......... 63 

2. Trade agreements between school, employer, and 
employee as to education of apprentices in Chi- 
cago 65 

3. Prevocational education in New York City . . 68 

4. Vocational guidance in Cincinnati 70 

5. Compulsory continuation school in Boston . . 70 

VII. A CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAM 

1. Different types of continuation schools ... 71 

2. Cooperation between school and factory ... 74 

3. Difference between vocational education for boys 
and girls 77 

163 



OUTLINE 

4. Time allotment for continuation schools ... 79 

5. Classes of instructors 80 

6. Academic subjects in a continuation school . . 81 

7. Evening general continuation schools .... 82 

8. Evening vocational continuation schools ... 83 

9. Value of unit courses 88 

10. Recreation for working children 95 

11. Prevocational courses 97 

12. Vocational guidance 98 

13. Placement bureau 106 

14. Courses of study for prevocational courses . . 109 

15. Courses of study in millwrighting for factory 
boys 125 

16. Course in home-making for a continuation 
school 131 

17. Courses for elementary evening continuation 
schools 137 

18. Courses for advanced evening continuation 
schools 138 

19. Methods of teaching in the old apprenticeship 
courses 148 

20. Methods of teaching shopwork in continuation 
school 149 

a 1. Methods of teaching academic subjects in con- 
tinuation school 151 

22. Methods of teaching immigrants 159 



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RIVERSIDE EDUCATIONAL 
MONOGRAPHS 

GENERAL EDUCATIONAL THEORY 

Dewey's MORAL PRINCIPLES IN EDUCATION .35 

Dewey's INTEREST AND EFFORT IN EDUCATION 60 

Eliot's EDUCATION FOR EFFICIENCY 35 

Eliot's CONCRETE AND PRACTICAL IN MODERN EDUCATION 35 

Emerson's EDUCATION 35 

Fiske's THE MEANING OF INFANCY 35 

Hyde's THE TEACHER'S PHILOSOPHY 35 

Palmer's THE IDEAL TEACHER 35 

Palmer's TRADES AND PROFESSIONS 35 

Prosser's THE TEACHER AND OLD AGE 60 

Teemab's THE TEACHER'S HEALTH 60 

Thobndike's INDIVIDUALITY 35 

ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION OF SCHOOLS 

Betts's NEW IDEALS IN RURAL SCHOOLS 60 

Bloomfield's VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE OF YOUTH .60 

Cabot's VOLUNTEER HELP TO THE SCHOOLS 60 

Cole's INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS 35 

Cubberlet's CHANGING CONCEPTIONS OF EDUCATION 35 

Cubberley's THE IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 35 

Dooley's THE EDUCATION OF THE NE'ER DO WELL 60 

Lewis's DEMOCRACY'S HIGH SCHOOL 60 

Perry's STATUS OF THE TEACHER 35 

Snedden's THE PROBLEM OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 35 

Trowbridge's THE HOME SCHOOL 60 

Weeks's THE PEOPLE'S SCHOOL 60 

METHODS OF TEACHING 

Atwood's KINDERGARTEN THEORY AND PRACTICE 60 

Bailey's ART EDUCATION 60 

Betts's THE RECITATION 60 

Campagnac's THE TEACHING OF COMPOSITION 35 

Cooley's LANGUAGE TEACHING IN THE GRADES 35 

Eaehart's TEACHING CHILDREN TO STUDY 60 

Evans's THE TEACHING OF HIGH SCHOOL MATHEMATICS 35 

Faibchild's THE TEACHING OF POETRY IN THE HIGH SCHOOL 60 

Freeman's THE TEACHING OF HANDWRITING 60 

Halibcrton and Smith's TEACHING POETRY IN THE GRADES 60 

Hartwell's THE TEACHING OF HISTORY 35 

Haynes's ECONOMICS IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 60 

Hill's THE TEACHING OF CIVICS 60 

Jenkins's READING IN THE PRIMARY GRADES 60 

Kilpatrick's THE MONTESSORI SYSTEM EXAMINED 35 

Palmer's ETHICAL AND MORAL INSTRUCTION IN THE SCHOOLS.. .35 

Palmer's SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 35 

Sdzzallo's THE TEACHING OF PRIMARY ARITHMETIC 60 

Suzzallo's THE TEACHING OF SPELLING 60 

2116 



ffifoerssfoe educational ifttouograp^is 

EDITED BY HENRY SUZZALLO 

PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE 



THE EDUCATION OF THE 
NE'ER-DO-WELL 

By William H. Dooley 

PRINCIPAL, TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOL 
FALL RIVER, MASS. 



Price 60 cents. Postpaid. 



Perhaps the most pressing problem which confronts educators 
to-day is the question, what to do with the large number of boys 
and girls of limited ability who are neglected by the traditional 
school system, and who must fall into " blind alley " jobs, without 
the possibility of progressing in school or receiving a parallel en- 
lightenment at work which will make life as a whole significant. 

The author has had ten years' experience in dealing with this 
problem : first in actual contact with pupils of this class, as prin- 
cipal of high schools in different manufacturing centers in Mass- 
achusetts, and then as a student of the technical schools abroad. 

The Education of the Ne'er-Do-Weil presents first a complete 
analysis of the problem from the social and economic side, then 
from the personal or psychological side, followed by a study of 
first-hand experience, ending with very concrete suggestions as to 
how to organize and administer schools for such pupils. 

The chapter heads in this monograph are : — The Neglected 
Ne'er-Do-Well; The Qualities of the Ne'er-Do-Well; The Tra- 
ditional School's Failure to Adapt; The Special Needs of this 
Class ; Educational Adaptations Abroad; Some American Ex- 
periments ; A Constructive Program. 

Every superintendent, grammar school and evening high school 
principal, social worker, student of education, playground official, 
vocational adviser, Y. M. C. A. official — in fact, all who have met 
the problem of the ne'er-do-well — will welcome this illuminating 
little book. 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 



